Luxury

I seem to have so much time this week! It’s just that everything falls together so simply: I wake up each morning to an alarm clock I’d used before and known how to set properly, and I immediately know where I am. I walk into the bathroom and find all of my own soaps and lotions lined up just the way I like them—-no digging in the bottom of a duffel bag, stabbing myself with tweezers as I go, to find my shampoo. Similarly, all of my clothes are hanging in a closet in easy view, not stacked on top of each other inside a laundry bag. I dress in two minutes, leave my pajamas hanging on a hook instead of packing them away, and walk into a kitchen where all of my food is out of boxes and easy to find. The day goes on like this: I pet cats who already know me, and I sit down to write for hours at a kitchen table, knowing that I won’t have to pack up and move again for another three weeks!

All of this is rare for me. Last August, I gave up my apartment and began house sitting full-time. I move from place to place every week or so, sometimes every few days. Last week, between sits, I rented a room in an apartment full of roommates. My new roomies seemed to be very nice folks, but they were strangers still, and I felt so shy that I spent most of my time driving around town, hanging out in coffeehouses, dropping in on my mother for dinner, and running errands mis-planned to make me drive all over the Denver-Boulder area-—anything to avoid being at “home.” Within a few days, it was time to pack and move yet again. This packing, moving, shyness, and rushing around are my usual state of affairs. When I do slow down enough to wonder why I’m not making more progress on my goals—-building my freelance editing business, writing more, designing more submissions for knitting magazines, and so on—-I realize that most of my time is spent spinning in circles.

I love my house sitting life, and especially all of the pets I get to know and care for. I love the freedom of not having to pay rent. Still, I’m realizing how many comforts those of us who have long-term homes take for granted. Most Americans feel we have a lot on our minds—-how to pay our bills, how to advance our careers, how to take care of children and other loved ones, how long our health will hold out-—but it’s amazing to realize how many important things we take for granted. When was the last time you wondered where you would be living next week? I’ve gotten used to wondering, and to hustling on the phone and internet to figure it out. When did you last think about where your toothbrush was, or where your kitchen staples were? I spend a great deal of time moving mine around, unpacking them, organizing them, repacking, and moving again.

Of course, I take the most basic comforts for granted, too. I was reminded of this while listening (on that most addictive of luxuries, an iPod) to the February 17 edition of This American Life. In the segment “The Call of the Great Indoors,” Chelsea Merz told about her friend Matthew, who has been homeless for seven years. Matthew, in turn, had told her stories of people he’d met on the street, and how they gathered together to exchange advice on finding food and surviving the elements. Everyone’s favorite topic-—everyone’s obsession-—was sleep: who got any last night, where they did it, for how long, and how they’d managed it. One man Matthew talked with hadn’t slept a wink one rainy night, for the only place he could find to hide from the downpour was an apartment building’s trash compactor. He'd sat up all night, dry, but terrified that at any moment someone might turn on the machine and unwittingly crush him to death. People who live indoors, Merz pointed out, rarely think much about sleep. We may lose an hour or two sitting up, worrying about other things, but we rarely think about how amazing it is to find a place to lay around for six to eight hours, with no fear of being frozen, robbed, arrested, beaten, or crushed. To us, a bed in a safe room is too ordinary to think about; to a homeless person, it’s a miracle.

I think my current lifestyle gives me a nice balance of safety and awareness. I needed Merz to show me how wonderful it is to always have a warm bed in a relatively quiet room each night, but my odd lifestyle makes me notice the wonder of having one closet, one medicine cabinet, one kitchen, and one living room as a home base. On the rare occasions, like now, when I have a house sit that is many weeks long, I feel like a powerhouse of efficiency, living in the lap of luxury. Life is more exciting when I take fewer things for granted. I don’t want to live like Matthew does-—I enjoy knowing where my next meal and tonight’s bed are coming from-—but I am grateful for the opportunity to see how comfortable my life really is.