I signed up for a donation truck pick up, got everything out on the porch and — it’s still on my front porch.  So now I have to figure out what I’m going to do.

In the mean time, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to some of the questions you all have been posing on the decision to eliminate the lawn service. As in, why are we doing it? Because it’s a great question.

I’m not sure I have a complete, well thought out rationale, other than the fact that when we first approached this project, the idea of simple living wasn’t just about decluttering, but also self-sufficiency. Downsizing possessions, houses, cars. It’s all sort of interconnected to the problem of excess and misplaced priorities.

We bought a big house with a big yard and a pool and it needs to be maintained. And we don’t do that ourselves, we pay someone else to do it. And I started wondering if we were spoiled. Which, of course, we were/are.

Well, if we’re spoiled, how do we get unspoiled? Go in the complete opposite direction: Cancel the lawn service. Cancel the housekeeping service. Cancel the pool service.

I tried to categorize things into nice, neat little boxes. Like domestic help equals spoiled. And doing it ourselves equals not spoiled.

But, I’m starting to think that’s not necessarily the case. That it’s not so black and white. We want to be good stewards of our resources — money, time, relationships, all of it. And be grateful, not take things for granted. I guess I feel guilty for being successful? I don’t know, because that makes no sense. We’ve worked hard to get where we are. Which is great, but taking it all for granted isn’t.

I guess maybe that’s it. I don’t know. I still don’t know. For now, we’re doing things for ourselves. We’ll see how it goes.

And the procedure went well, but I’m still recovering. Still in pain, but I refuse to remain anything but hopeful.