When we go to Sea Ranch, I often come home refreshed not only from the sea, but by how simple we can live.

The houses in this community are simply built. Not that a great amount of care isn’t put into the architecture or building, in fact the opposite is more likely true. But each house seems to be spared of such frivolities as ornate trim work, fussy paint colors, or landscape. The care seems to go into making the most of the view, the light and covering both the inside and outside of the houses in wood.

We try and take only what we really need. For me that was two pairs of pants, two tops, two pairs of shoes, pjs, cozy slippers, socks, a book and a knitting project. Well, and the camera of course. I limited the kids to one backpack full of clothes each. No computers, no internet, no toys besides two lego trucks, no excess amount of stuff. For the better part of the week we live sparingly.

It’s so refreshing to not have all the clutter around. I purge our house on a regular basis. Purging is what I do when I feel stressed out. Some people clean, some people eat, I throw things out. Yet still in a house of five people, each with their own set of interests, clutter can’t be avoided and sometimes it makes me go a little bananas. This last week though, with little to clean up and a spare amount of laundry and dishes, I could sit and read and knit and take walks with out any guilt at all. Heaven! Scott collected mussels and caught a crab for dinner and treated us to a nice bottle of local gin and fancy tonic.

The constant pain of stress knots between my shoulder blades actually faded away on day three. I had gone for a walk, sat down on the bluffs and realized that tension, by now a constant companion, was gone.

I brought my handmade beauty goodies for little spa like indulgences while the kids watched deer tv every morning.

We’re back now and in the in-between days of vacationing and getting back to the schedule of life. We came back to the treat of newly refinished wood floors but with baseboard to be put in and two rooms of furniture strewed about the house. Scott powered out the baseboard in two days and the furniture is slowly getting placed in it’s spot. Then it will be a matter of my regular post-Sea-Ranch household purge and a simplifying of our crazy schedule. And then we can get back to the business of gardening.