What a Difference A Week (Or Two) Makes!

Okay, some people are going to thing we are downright crazy after reading this post and my previous post of less than two weeks ago.

A funny thing happened on the way to building a house.  Call it divine intervention, divine inspiration,  astrological woo-woo, or just plain ol’ fashioned insanity.

Three weeks ago we went to our monthly full-moon meditation and listened to a half hour discussion on what was going on astrologically for people this month.  One of the messages was ‘you will become clear in your goals.’   That’s nice we thought.

So we’ve been marching along with the house building plans, making phone calls, researching products, and finally got our meeting scheduled with the architect to review the builders’ bids.    TWO DAYS before the meeting,  Bruce and I were sitting around in Wainui and I don’t know how we got started, but one of us said something along the lines of ‘Hey, I think we can actually make it work with what we’ve got.  I think I can move into the front bedroom and not have the king size bed, and make do with a smaller kitchen.  Less is more you know.’    And strangely enough, we both agreed, without really any argument, we both said, ‘Yeah, let’s not do this project as we’ve designed.  It’s too big.  I don’t want to spend all my time maintaining a giant house.  I don’t want to spend $400,000 and then have to bring in income.  I want my freedom’.

And so on Monday morning, we went into the meeting feeling all giddy and, well, crazy.  After all, we’d just paid $21,000 for a year’s worth of meetings and a set of plans.   We told Russell and Sandy that it didn’t matter what the bids came in at, we’d decided we weren’t going to do the project.    Once their mouths were able to close, we had a really good discussion about our reasons why and then Sandy presented us with the bids.

Well, good thing we’d changed our minds because the bids came in high.  Between $380,000 – $420,000 and that’s with us cutting costs on lots of items AND not even including pricing for hardwood floors and landscaping which we were going to do post-build.   Too much money.

We left the meeting quite cheerful and with a heavy load lifted.  We told Russell we’d have a think about what we want to do and get back to him.

Now that we’ve had a few days to mull it all over, we’re both still pleased.  And we are grateful to our friends and role models Sola & Inayat  who inspire us to live more simply.   They sent us their five questions to ask oneself when making big decisions:

1) What could be EVEN EASIER???
2) What could be more FUN?
3) Are my footsteps getting lighter as I walk down this path?
4) Is this making my heart sing?
5) When I imagine myself going there, being there, does this bring me MORE JOY and PEACE?

Our hearts are singing.  We’ve made the right choice.

There will be a renovation, but it will be on a much smaller and holistic scale.  Less is more.  Work with what we’ve got