Vickie and I purchased her mother’s old craftsman home in 2014, after she passed. While I was working in the basement I noticed all of the floor joists were numbered. I did a little research and discovered that the house was a craftsman home. Sold by Sears and shipped by rail-car to the small community where we live.
Back then Sears was one of the largest retailers in the country. Selling everything for the home, including the home itself. Today they are on the verge of bankruptcy. Sears was the king of mail order, before mail order was cool – now called online shopping or internet retail. The main difference is Sears sent out paper catalogs, (The Big Book) and Amazon uses digital catalogs.
So if the business models are so similar. Why did Sears go broke and Amazon become the largest retail company in the world? Sears changed their focus to brick and mortar stores. Anchoring malls in the late 70’s and 80’s and even quit the catalog in 1993. So it’s interesting that right around this same time period, Bezos founded Amazon, (1994) dealing mostly in online book and music sales.
Largest Retailer in the Great Wide World
But you can’t help wondering about the fact that just as Sears was backing away from the mail order business. Amazon swoops in with a similar business model and becomes the largest retailer in the world. Even surpassing WalMart in 2015. Makes you go, hmmm. Why would Sears, a company that was so successful, the pinnacle of the capitalistic endeavor just quit doing what made them so successful?
Sears fell to the Siren Song of the Urban / Suburban planner. Building bedroom communities, hours away from the jobs where people work. This completely unsustainable concept has brought more than Sears to its knees. Our entire society is currently reeling from this ill fated suburbanization of our country.
The only ones to benefit are perhaps the automobile companies, as the folks commute 2 hours per day between their gated communities and their jobs. The husband in one direction and the wife in the other. Since both need to work in order to afford the expensive suburban lifestyle. The fuel bill alone more than our entire monthly living costs here at the cottage.
Modern Homes
From 1908–1940, Sears, Roebuck and Co. sold over 70,000 homes through their mail-order Modern Homes program. Customers could choose a house to suit their individual tastes and budget. Sears was not a home designer, they were a follower of popular home design. With the added advantage of modifying house plans and hardware, according to buyer tastes. Modern Home customers had the freedom to build their own dream house. Sears helped realize their dream through quality design and favorable financing.
Ours was sold under the name Winona and is probably right around a 100 years old. It was not in very good shape, when we bought it. We call it “The Cottage.” We purchased it primarily to keep it in the family. The cost to keep it going was not much more per month than most people in suburbia spend on their storage units. To store all their stuff they really don’t need in the first place. But can’t stop buying, because let’s face it, buying more stuff is what we have been conditioned to do. That’s what keeps the world spinning; growth at all costs, damn the torpedos, full speed ahead. Bigger, better, more.
The house we moved out of when we retired was 3-4 times the size of this one. Over half of it rarely got used. Part of that was because we bought the house while we were raising two boys. They now have families of their own and houses of similar size. While not as large as many of the McMansions out there. It was significantly larger than we actually needed and it feels good to downsize. I am so glad the we woke up enough to appreciate that the finer things in life are not necessarily bigger, faster or more expensive.
Beautiful Spaces
Everyday we try to find at least one thing around the cottage that we can work on to repair, fix or beautify. Some of these projects are simple. Like refinishing the built in cutting boards in the kitchen cabinets or planting more flowers. Other projects are more complicated and take several weeks to complete. Like jacking up a sagging floor in the front half of the house and replacing a load bearing wall in the basement or building a picket fence so the dogs have free run of the yard.
Each project offers the opportunity to use our imagination, to create special spaces that make us happy and joyful. There are still hundreds of projects awaiting our attention, but we are not in any hurry, our goal is not to race through the tasks as quickly as possible. To flip the house while the real-estate market is at it’s peak, like all the HGTV shows. Our goal is to create beautiful spaces that inspire us to grow. Spaces that awaken our senses. Spaces we can share with family and friends.
A major benefit of downsizing is definitely the financial reward. We paid less than a tenth of what we sold our previous house for and it’s paid for, no mortgage, no interest. The taxes are less than a twentieth of what we paid previously. And for the cost of replacing the central air unit in the old house we will be able to continue our remodeling for the next decade. More than anything though, downsizing allowed us to retire early, debt free. To begin a new journey. One of discovery. A new adventure with no reason to hurry.
The Winona has aged siding. A droopy porch and squeaky floors. There is no swimming pool or breakfast nook, but she stays warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Even without central air. She is a cottage, not a castle and she is one of the best decisions we have ever made. Reminding us every day that in life, less is often more.