Honey.....I shrunk the house !

In these expensive times, homes have become unaffordable, and so it was our decision to shrink ourselves and rent a couple of post boxes from the US postal service so we could once again live within our means. Now all that was left was to figure out how to temporarily shrink ourselves. Our goal was to own the ultimate Tiny House.

When we were kids we all read the nursery rhyme “There was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe” Recently La and I moved lock stock and barrel into a comfortable P.O.Box at our local US post office. Now I know what you’re thinking? It would be against post office policy to allow anyone to live in a “postal repository.” Actually, that is not wholly accurate. We had our attorney Dick Butt, go over the U.S.P.O.Box rental agreement with a fine tooth comb. “Nowhere does it prohibit humans from inhabiting said boxes. As a matter of fact, the U.S.P.O. actually encourages it.” Butt explained in a long, rambling and often nonsensical statement. He was fired shortly thereafter.

Initially we found moving in to our P.O.Box awkward as we had to vacate the premises each morning between 9:00 and 10:30 am while our delightful landlords filled the boxes with the daily mail.Also because we’re on the 7th storey we had to buy an aluminum ladder from Lowes to climb to our hacienda each day. Getting out was easier as we both have backgrounds in “outward bound” courses and know how to rapel at will.

So the business of “how to shrink ourselves “ became the task of the day. First of all we studied pygmies and their genetic makeup. No luck there I’m afraid. We tried elective surgery, jogging, rowing, football, cricket, and severe diets, all to no effect. Nothing seemed to work and we became depressed, to the point of despair. And then ...VOILA....after 6 long minutes we hit upon a solution that was so obvious, and something it turned out we’d been using in our job for years. The solution was simple, and sadly something that adults often pack away in their closet full of memories, to think about fondly like memories of your childhood dog, or the family vacations you took each year at the lake. Memories that give you that warm fuzzy feeling in your tummy, but also something that most grown ups feel slightly embarrassed to admit that they’re feeling.

And so it was on a warm summers morning in June we both had a EUREKA moment and realized simultaneously that the ingredient that was necessary for an adult to shrink small enough to live in a P.O.Box was the most active ingredient that children possess, but normally something that’s erased from our consciousness by the time we become adults. It is of course, our IMAGINATION,and it turns out the bigger your imagination is, the smaller it is possible for you to become.

So armed with this information we began the task of getting smaller. We started “small” with a few of our toys

Then we imposed ourselves into Santa’s Workshop in a brilliant Christmas shop window at Harrods.

And then we managed to shrink ourselves smaller than our Dalmatian doggy Tolly and her 6 babies, molly, folly, holly, golly, wally,and dolly.

And the proudest “shrink” of all happened by chance, when we became elected officials in the UK at the Houses of Parliament (hey you can do anything with a good imagination) and we managed to erase poverty and hunger and eradicate all diseases from the world at the same time. We now knew it was time for us to start our new life in our P.O.Box

We were finally ready to move in to our new home. We went to Toys r Us and bought a few items of furniture “fit for a doll” and spent our 1st night in our new P.O.Box...a place we now call home, and a place we are blissfully happy in, and seem to look years and years younger.

Thanks to Regina Kelland for her kind inspiration in our decision to live in our P.O.Box. Long lunches, laughter and grown up lemonade may have been involved.