Kelly is a mother, runner, writer, designer and serial entrepreneur. She is also a reformed over-committer and believes that a busy life need not be a stressful life. She blogs about all this and more at A Life Less Frantic.
Join me. I am not keeping up with the Joneses
By
3 comments
My little family of two adults and one toddler live in what is best described (by Australian standards) as a ‘modest townhouse’. With three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a study and all the other usual stuff, our house is neither large nor small, but it is comfortable and nice and I love it.
Which is why I couldn’t believe I caught myself nodding the other day when my brother said to me ‘you’ll have to upgrade to a bigger house when you have your second baby won’t you?’
That’s right – I actually nodded. And then I caught myself.
Our house can actually fit two adults and two children very happily thanks very much. Heck, each child would have their own bedroom! That’s not bad considering I never got my own room until I moved in with my grandmother at age 18.
Sure in my perfect world we’d have a bigger living area and a playroom just for the kids and a backyard for them to run around in but really, at what point should I be stopping and thinking ‘you know what, life is good. Everything from here is icing.’
I know we humans are internally programmed to never sit on our laurels, to constantly push onwards and upwards for more, more, more … but maybe we need to stop sometimes and look at what is motivating us.
Is it that we want to keep up with the Joneses? Is it because we just like accumulating stuff? Or is it simply that we want the most comfortable life we can have?
The fact is, I DO want a bigger house and I DO dream of that little Aussie backyard with the Hills Hoist where the kids can play while I watch them out of the kitchen window. And I do want it for that more comfortable life.
But now I can see that these are WANTS rather than needs. And with a baby in my belly it’s changed my thinking somewhat. Instead of fretting about what life’s going to be like next year with a new baby in our ‘little’ house – I can now see that (der) it’s going to be perfectly fine.
And if we do start looking for that bigger house I’d like to think it won’t be with quite the same level of pressure and desperation and stress. And we all know that when you’re a lady with a newborn, you definitely don’t need any extra stress!
