Simple Life Boosts Family Intimacy
Changes for one Eastmoreland clan make for a realization that life isn’t about “stuff”
December 16, 2004 (Original publication date) The Oregonian
LINDA BAKER
Two major events led to the simplification of the Damaschino-Mellies family life.
First, after living in Germany for three years, Ellen Damaschino and her husband, Jay Mellies, returned to discover that they had forgotten 90 percent of everything they had put in storage.
“We paid all that money to store everything and we couldn’t even remember it,” says Damaschino, adding that they ended up dumping many of the books, dishware and furniture they had stored. “We realized it was so easy to pick up and be a family without all that stuff.”
Second, in 2002, Mellies had a brain hemorrhage. Although he made a full recovery, doctors had initially given him only a few months to live. (Mellies today is a microbiology professor at Reed College).
“I became a different person,” Damaschino says. “My husband became a different person. What became important was family time.”
“It sounds cliché,” she says. “But so many people don’t get it. Family life just isn’t about the house and the stuff.”
Fifteen months ago Damaschino, a former pastry chef, translated her personal passion for family simplicity into a home-based organizing business. The clean bright colors of her Eastmoreland home, the organized and neatly labeled cabinets and closets, and the absence of clutter testify to her flair for interior design and organization.
Less apparent, but equally important, are the values Damaschino has instilled in her children, Annika 11, and Aidan, 6, about paring down, helping out and living simply.
“Especially now around the holidays, everything is about bringing more stuff into the house,” she says. “But for us, Christmas is about baking cookies, getting the tree and having people over.”
Instead of going on a December shopping spree, Damaschino says she picks up gifts for friends and family throughout the year.
“The kids never see me shop,” she says. “My daughter doesn’t even have a Christmas list.”
So how does Damaschino bring her kids into the home-organizing fold? Get them started early, she explains, describing results that would make most parents envious.
Both kids do the dishes every night; he loads, she rinses. Annika cleans the downstairs bathroom once a week, and Aidan does the windows.
When they come home from school, both children head straight for the custom-designed cabinets in the kitchen, where they put away backpacks and lunchboxes. Homework and school information goes into a file box on the kitchen counter.
There’s nothing negative about having kids do household chores, Damaschino says. On the contrary, the work makes her kids happier and more confident.
My daughter says: “I know how to do dishes, I know how to cook.”
Damaschino isn’t above a little coercion.
Annika and Aidan have 24 hours to put away their clean laundry. Otherwise Mom threatens to donate one of their Beanie Babies, a high- priority object in a household that takes a minimalist approach to toys.
“I only had to do it once,” Damaschino adds quickly.
A sense of humor is also a must. When she asks her son to complete a chore “or else,” he says: ‘I know, the closet under the stairs.’ Of course, we don’t have a closet under the stairs.”
About that family time. Despite a full schedule of rock-climbing lessons, ice hockey practice and work-related activities, the entire family eats dinner together every night, goes for evening walks in the neighborhood and plays lots of pool in the basement.
Having a small house—1.600 square feet, three bedrooms, two baths – makes it easier to cut down on material objects and spend more time together as a family, Damaschino says. “I never want a bigger house. I like that we’re intimate.”
She points to a downstairs closet, where Annika has left a notebook for a school report on the floor.
“See, she dumped it,” Damaschino says. “We’re not perfect.”