Worth It

I headed to the bathroom which is located right behind the main cabin, it is actually attached to it but can only be accessed from the outside. Relevant information only if you visit us at some point but it sets the mood for the story. Anyway, I am headed to the bathroom and find the door locked, not a surprise considering there is 1 bathroom being shared by 10 adults. I then quickly turned around (who knows how long they are going to be in there!) and headed to the nearest outhouse, we have two of them. The outhouses are finally functional again. Not that you couldn’t use them during the winter but it would be at the great risk of getting frosty… uumm… cheeks.

This little outhouse event occurred after spending the afternoon hammering the old rusty nails out of the old barn wood so that we can finish the interior of our cabin. A cabin that I should mention is just over 400 square feet. No kitchen. No bathroom. No running water.

Why you may wonder do we live in such circumstances? That is a fairly normal question. Most people tend to pawn it off as us being hippies or even the dreaded C word. You know the C word. I wouldn’t call it either. But then again who ever asks the people who are actually living it? Labels, names, all that comes from the outsiders, those observing.

Now when asked about living in a community setting it would be easy to rattle off the inconvenience of not having the normal amenities in the house or sharing a kitchen and having to wait for the bathroom. And then there are the occasions when I am pounding old nails out of old boards that I would kind of like to go purchase the boards new and cut out all the middle part. But there is something about putting the extra work in to the boards that we are putting up. The boards have character. People pay thousands of dollars for refurbished barn wood. I am saving us $$$ and saving is pretty much as good as earning right? In theory anyway. I don’t really know if it works out on paper that way. Either way it is the effort that I am putting in to these boards and the fact that they are not generic. No one else has these boards, pre-made boards don’t have their character, no other boards have my time investment and that makes them all the more unique and all the more mine.

My boards are like my community. There are things right off the bat that look like they are more work and may actually take a higher initial investment, even more than that they take a more personal investment, it is something I can’t just throw money at. Then there are the things that I was thinking about while hammering the nails I was making a bonus list of living in community (if that is what you would like to call it and for lack of a better word). We pay $450 a month, that includes groceries, house payment, internet, electricity, supplies… it doesn’t include the cell phone. That allows me to stay home with the mini man while superman can work just one job to me that is worth the outhouses. I have built in baby sitters not only that but they are people that also care about him like no baby sitter could. I don’t have to be alone. Even though I am a stay at home mom I have adults to talk to. “These are just a few of my favorite things”.

In the end you just can’t put a dollar amount on character or on being able to commune with others and it’s worth the outhouses and everything else because there is freedom in the lack of claiming individual rights.