think small...

bigger isn't always better...but then again...i suspect most of you know this...just look around...mcmansions have become a blight on the landscape...oversized portions in restaurants are a waste of food and well...forget about what it does to the waistline...suvs guzzle gas and pollute the air...it's time to think small...

for instance...does anybody really need a king-size bed to rattle around in? i have to confess...i have my cal king bed...which i love...but...as a single girl...who sleeps on the same side every nite...i'm not so sure it was necessary...if you're going to own a bed that big...you might as well invite a few friends over and host a huge pajama party...and how many acres does a person really require for a backyard? surely not a thousand...we've become a nation of excess...too many cars, too many tvs and, often enough, too many houses that are too big for their own good...

last summer i got a chance to go to the opening reception for a designer showhouse that was so large, so spread out and equipped with so many rooms that i wondered as i walked through, how family members would ever find one another...and, worse, how they could hear a child in trouble and how quickly they could come to the rescue...

life on a grand scale may have suited marie antoinette, although from all that's been written and portrayed, she seemed to be the ultimate poor little rich girl...but even the queen of france needed to retreat to her petit hameau to escape the opulence of versailles...

don't get me wrong...i like space and splendor as much as the next person...well...maybe a little more than that...but there comes a point of diminishing returns...the people i've met who have a multitude of houses in many different places always appear to be on the run and are never quite sure where home really is...they also seem tired a lot of the time and prone to colds and other maladies...self-imposed stress, i call it...

on the other hand, the sanest men and women i know consciously do not bite off more than they can chew (which makes me wonder if there's a kind of heimlich manuever to save us from choking on our overextended lives). and when it comes to their "stuff," they are constantly trying to edit it down...consequently, they have a better grip on just about everything...

moral: sometimes less really is more...and small may even be better...