Chasing Utopia article in Times (17 May)

Reminding me of our “furniture” conversation, and how it makes a huge difference once you start owning good furniture (and caring for it, storing it, and wondering why it is more important than traveling Europe): A New York Times article called, “Chasing Utopia, Family Imagines No Possessions” (May 17, 2008, by Ralph Blumenthal and Rachel Mosteller) talks briefly about “downsizing.” Aimee and Jeff Harris from Austin, Texas, are giving/selling/ridding themselves of possessions, down to and including their wedding rings, to become organic farmers/homesteaders in Vermont (by this June!). They want to eat healthy and clean. They have a blog: www.cagefreefamily.com. A few other families also are mentioned paring down to basics, one to live in a traveling RV, another a catamaran. The reference points are Mary E. Grigsby, associate professor of rural sociology at the University of Missouri and the author of Buying Time and Getting By: The Voluntary Simplicity Movement, and Juliet B. Schor, a sociology professor at Boston College and author of The Overspent American.