The first thing I did after getting home from a 10-hour flight from Italy last week is clean out my wardrobe closet. I was exhausted and in desperate need of sleep, but this was something I had to do. I was craving some of the simplicity that I’d experienced on a three-week trip to Italy.
Less stuff, more la dolce vita (the sweet life). Italian closets are tiny. So are the homes.
Most people live in apartments of about 1,000 square feet. No one has a three-car garage, a status kitchen, a big backyard or an SUV. Because of diminutive domestic quarters, people live large outside, either on their tiny loggias (porches) and rooftops or in public piazzas and outdoor restaurants, where you sit elbow-to-elbow with strangers who become friends by the end of the meal.
The country is one-quarter the size of Ontario with four times the population. Space is at a premium. Because there isn’t room for extras, life gets pared down to the basics.
The average size of a cappuccino is six ounces (compare that to a grande Starbucks at 16 ounces). Espresso is served in egg cups. Italians don’t typically own dryers.
Wash day is determined by the weather and clothes are hung to air outside open windows, across balconies and sometimes even strung across the street, a communal dynamic that connects one household to another, undies and all. About those open windows: Italians don’t use screens, only shutters to keep the bugs out at night and the heat out during the midday. (Air conditioning is .
