My husband just finished installing a few new doors in our house. Since I mostly work with words on paper (or screen) and am utterly useless with manipulating tangible objects, I’m always in awe of anyone who can fix or create anything. With this project, though, I realized the doors are fine but it’s the knobs that make a big difference.

Meanwhile, I’ve been contemplating some friends of ours who ditched their doors entirely– along with most other possessions — and took off traveling around the world with two young children. I hope to write about them and so have been doing more research into families who’ve made similar choices.

Part of the freedom is that you no longer spend hundreds of dollars replacing a few doorknobs! And, yet, here I am in my office… appreciating my door a little too much maybe. Are knobs my new cake? Hmmm…too bad we can’t have them and be vagabonds too.