Invaluable Simplicity

Last July, we moved into a new rental house, and despite our excitement about landing in NorCal, leaving Colorado was an exhausting move. By our first day in the new house, my nerves were fraying at the edges. And that’s when I heard it: Beep beep beep. Beeeeeeep, beeeeep, beeeeeep. Beep beep beep. 

My husband angled his ear toward the ceiling. “Wait,” he said, “That’s morse code for SOS.” (It’s at this point I learned something useful came from his months spent away at military officer training school.)

“Maybe it’s the old security system?” I shouted back, scrolling through the PDF our landlord had sent us with the code that apparently needed to be punched in every so often when the ghost in the machine acted up. I entered the four digits into the defunct keypad by the garage door. Nothing. Beep beep beep. Beeeeeeep, beeeeep, beeeeeep. Beep beep beep.

Growing increasingly frazzled, we passed from room to room. A rogue fire alarm? A carbon monoxide detector alerting us to noxious fumes? Wait, am I starting to feel sleepy? There was no obvious source. Beep beep beep. Beeeeeeep, beeeeep, beeeeeep. Beep beep beep. 

We finally zeroed in: It was coming from inside the ceiling in the lofted area of the second floor. We looked at each other, wondering how the hell we’d reach…whatever it was…in the brains of our home. I sent a video to our landlord (filmed by pointing my phone at the nothingness of the beeping ceiling, paired with my text rendition of the pattern). 

One rickety ladder ascension into the attic later, we had removed the beeping leak detector from the overflow pan of the home’s upstairs A/C unit and scheduled a repairman. 

Something like this—a rogue sound, a weird smell—happens approximately once per month, and almost always in the middle of the night. Fumbling around in the dark, we try to solve the puzzle. (A recent episode: Did a skunk crawl under the chimney and die?) Sometimes, I just have to laugh at the ways our home’s inexplicable quirks reveal themselves.

When we lived in a two-bedroom apartment in Dallas, I always figured our living situation was something we should aspire to graduate from as soon as possible. Getting into a house—preferably a large one, in the ~suburbs~!—seemed like the “final destination” goal, and unmistakably better than what we had. (While previous generations tended to experience this advancement by purchasing their first home(s), we’re millennials who move every two years, so we rent ours.)

So as we got older and earned more money, we shifted into our first single-family home in Colorado, then this bigger single-family home in Sacramento. The progression seemed natural; admirable, even. After all, most young and middle-aged adults don’t intentionally downsize in square footage or quality in their living spaces as they accumulate wealth. 

But after moving into our current home—objectively the nicest place I’ve ever lived, as an adult or otherwise—I was surprised when I started to feel something akin to nostalgia for our simpler two-bedroom apartment days.

Before my landlord reads this and kicks me out for unpaid gratitude, don’t get me wrong: There’s a lot I love about this house. My husband and I have our own offices and studios (his for music, mine for podcasting). We have a guest room and bathroom that’s made it possible for us to host comfortably. We even converted the formal living room into a home gym to make spontaneous workouts easier. (Upon seeing our behemoth of a squat rack where his loveseat used to be, the owner simply said, “Wow, okay.”) We even have a hot tub, which makes regular afternoons feel like vacations (with a view of a small lake, no less!).

But there are perks of a less palatial life that I find myself missing now that going anywhere means getting in a car and driving for at least 10 minutes. I can’t pop next door for coffee anymore or walk down the block for groceries. Cleaning this place is a part-time job that takes a full workday’s worth of time and energy. We pay a small fortune to heat and cool it; at this point, PG&E should begin their earnings calls by personally thanking us for our contributions to their bottom line. And sometimes, when the first of the month rolls around and I Venmo our landlord an amount of money that would make my parents blush, I think, “I miss renting one-half of a two-bedroom apartment.”

Life back then might’ve had far fewer amenities, but it was also a hell of a lot simpler (and, it goes without saying: cheaper). When things feel complicated or high-stakes now, that simplicity calls to me like a refuge. This is (probably) natural: My unexpected yearning for those days might speak more to the low stakes of the time period overall, rather than reflect a genuine real estate preference for sharing a sink.

But I never seriously considered much of this when I was house-hunting—the fact that tripling my space also meant tripling my utilities bills, or that I’d be unable to reasonably keep up with the cleaning myself, or that it would take an hour to locate and disarm rogue beeps. I didn’t worry much about the fact that I wouldn’t be able to walk to restaurants or fitness classes or even public transportation anymore. I just quietly assumed that “bigger” and “fancier” necessarily meant “better” and “happier.” 

That more money (and the space, access, and luxuries it can buy) offers linear growth in lifestyle and happiness is a widely held assumption. Ramit Sethi tells a story of a woman he asked what she loved to spend money on: Top Shop, she had responded. So he asked what would happen if she was able to 10x her fashion spending: “Top Shop bags, everywhere!” she exclaimed. Even when we’re dreaming, we can’t help but apply a direct 1:1 scale. 

Sethi’s point in this exercise is to ditch the linear thinking: Spending more doesn’t necessarily mean having literally more.

Despite these truths, it is hard to shrink your lifestyle once you’ve expanded it. I can imagine someone reading this and going, “What’s stopping you, Zoomer? You’re a renter. Just move into a smaller place!” We likely will, once we leave our duty station here in Northern California. But beyond logistics, once you get accustomed to certain luxuries like a home office and home gym (or buying new clothes every month, or going out to dinner every night, or insert lifestyle-creep of choice here), the idea of forgoing these luxuries feels like a loss that might even supersede the joy of gaining them in the first place—even if they’re not totally delivering on the happiness anticipated. 

I would never tell someone not to expand their lifestyle at all—just to do so cautiously, and with approximately 50% more intention than you’d assume is necessary. 

Am I happier now? Sometimes, when I’m closing out a long day from the hot tub, I think I really might be. But am I three times happier? Certainly not. The happiest moments in our new house have been the ones where friends or family have visited and stayed in our guest room, something we couldn’t offer to loved ones in our apartment or first home. This goes to show that, yes, material improvements can improve your quality of life, but most upgrades operate on a power law: 20% of the enhancements will be responsible for 80% of the joy, and the remaining metaphoric square footage will just leave you vacuuming extra rooms on Saturday morning and pining for your shoebox of vinyl flooring and vibes.