I have not worked outside much lately. Brutal heat first, then daily thunderstorms that have me not want to be outside on the hill. Hopefully that will settle down in a few days.
I have taken the opportunity to go through my possessions and simplify.
For a non shopper (except books) I have a lot of unnecessary stuff. The neighborhood is waiting for decent weather for a combined garage sale, and we are all going through sorting out the accumulation.
A gal in Seattle who was a manic clothes shopper loaded me up with boxes of clothes just as I moved to New Mexico. Size okay but our taste in clothes is so far off that I have never worn the stuff, no matter how well made. I am a plain plain plain and she is a flaming flamboyant. She would so like me to get flamboyant but I like plain… redhead or not.
I still have bric-a-brac from my good friend in Texas who covered every surface and every wall with fiddly little cute items I would never enjoy cleaning, and which over the years she gifted to me. They are cute but I am so very plain plain plain… in comparison.
Now my older neighbor has started bringing me things….
I have my final cabin design and the small size means I will need to size down again. I am delighted with it and excited to get started building, hopefully in the spring. I have more lovely things than will fit inside, so here I am, sorting and downsizing. I do love beautiful things but just like them spaced farther apart.
As small as my home will be, I included a Japanese style art display niche in the bedroom. Simple and satisfying for me.
treeseeddreaming 
I wondered where you had been. I’m not a fan of working in the blazing heat…
Downsizing is an on-going process I find – the generosity of others is astounding and it is easier to take than to say no. Plus, through Freegle (an equivalent of Craigslist), I keep acquiring more clutter. Eg a whole box of files instead of the one I wanted because the offer seemed too good to miss.
Fortunately for clothes that aren’t to my taste there is a physical (offline) clothes exchange. So I can get stuff which fits, is in my colours etc 😉.
I keep thinking this stuff is multiplying like rabbits. I like exchanging clothes, went to a clothing exchange party one Saturday and had major fun with a house full of women who brought a lot of stuff. I took a huge pile and the gal hosting sent me home with more than I brought.
I know I have been generous with giving things my whole life but I sure have received back too. After the garage sale I will take things to the Salvation Army Thrift Store. I have given a couple pretty original art pieces to the gal who works there. I just will not have the wall space. I think a few small pieces will be more than enough.
I miss being outside.
Hope you can get outside again soon.
Similar conditions to what we have in New Cairo, only we don’t have the thunderstorms. I have to be very careful how much time I spend outside, and what part of the day I risk being there – essential to be out of direct sun. Brutal heat, as you say. But it’s great for drying the supplies needed for composting/hugelkultur – my waste heaps are sizzling in the sun nowadays.
Your way of life sounds beautifully simple, the corner of your bedroom quite Zen. You must live in a way close to that of a yogi: kudos to you for minimising the impact you have on the world. But I agree with you about books – they are the exception to my efforts to pare down the neediness of my way of living.
You get my life perfectly. It is very zen and very quiet. Modern life requires I buy land etc. but a hut by a stream in the woods suits me best of all. My dad took us camping in the woods for 3 months every summer. Wandering the woods with a big German Shepherd by my side was heaven on earth. I love my books.
Not an easily attained lifestyle close to town. As a female I might have been burned at the stake, though.
That you might!
Don’t I know it. Old gal wanders woods collecting herbs and making potions. Mushrooms. Stuff like that. When I read novels I always wanted to be the old herb lady in the woods, but she always came to a bad end. I never saw me as the young princess or cinderella. Clearly a druid, hermit, wise woman, or a mountain monkin a prior life. Even as a little kid I thought that.
Oh, a wise woman, for sure! Interesting, isn’t it, how women – young and old – who collected “simples” in the woods or grew them in their gardens, and on whom apothecaries and even early physicians (e.g. at London’s St Thomas’s hospital) relied for supplies of medical herbs, could then be suspected of witchcraft. Convenient scapegoats when things went awry, probably after being mishandled by the men, if you ask me.
Sylvia,
I always wanted to be such a woman. Scapegoats easy to target. I am learning more herbal cures every day. In my older years here I am doing it anyway.