Getting My Feet Under Me

Part of our daily school commute, I'm so lucky!

In spite of the fact that I still can't find my John Lennon calendar, this move has been perhaps the smoothest that a cross-country move mid-school-year with three school-aged children could be. Our new community has been incredibly welcoming and the town itself is the best-kept secret in the country. Although we froze our tuckuses (my 5-year-old's favorite new word) off in February and March the spring has been absolutely beautiful. Our walks to school take us through the city's largest park and along a pond and creek full of ducks and geese. The creek is crossed by a series of architecturally interesting and diverse bridges, some of them quite elaborate and all of them well-maintained. Many of the houses are historic -- dating back to the 1850's and earlier -- and the entire area is set off by mature trees, daffodils, and tulips.

Tiny ducks have hatched!

That's the up side.

The down side is particularly sad given the loving care that has been tended to the appearance of the houses, park, and historic downtown where we spend most of our time. The park is PACKED every weekend, and for a large part of each day; runners, walkers, toddlers and their caregivers. But the sides of the stream are littered with plastic bags, drink bottles, and random trash. There's even a discarded Big Wheels tricycle tangled in one of the trees at the water's edge. Cigarette butts litter the gutters along the road where smokers toss them out their windows as they drive. One of my to-do list items is to buy each of the children gardening gloves so they can help take on yard-cleaning duty from all the trash that blows into our bushes from the street.



I feel like I'm living in one of those great fraternity row houses in Athens, Georgia that look beautiful, and ought to be beautiful, but have been abused by residents who don't know how to care for such a treasure.

The sight of all this trash, of the thousands of plastic bags leaving the grocery and hardware stores each day, of the styrofoam take-out containers we're handed at restaurants, has made me disheartened. Now that we're away from Marin County and I am seeing more clearly what consumption looks like in our country, and I have to admit, it has brought me down. The effort to do better is going to be a lot harder than I was accustomed to when I was part of the Marin County Kumbaya Patrol.

So the challenge is to build a set of routines that bring the new culture and our family's values into harmony. In the meantime, the setting certainly provides incentive...

Book Review: Cleaning House

One afternoon I found myself with an hour to spare in a part of town that made it inconvenient to go home before I had to pick up a kid. There happened to be a bookstore right there. And so I found myself, for one glorious hour, browsing a brick-and-mortar bookstore for no other reason than that I could. One whole hour spent just wandering shelves, looking at titles, flipping through cookbooks and pondering new releases.

Which is how I found this:

We're preparing for a cross-country move with three kids, and I thought Kay Wills Wyma's Cleaning House: A Mom's 12-Month Experiment to Rid Her Home of Youth Entitlement would be a great resource for how to motivate the kids to give me the help I need to make this process go smoothly.

Wyma claims her Experiment was prompted by her 14-year-old son's off-hand request for a Porsche for his 16th birthday. She came up with a twelve-step program to teach the children the hows and whys of self-sufficiency. Each month was assigned a step (see below for a list).

Each month she announced, via a pseudo-democratic family meeting, what the project of the month was. She heard the groans, the protests, and the eyerolls, and she persevered. She gave each child his or her own container, put a dollar for each day of the month in it, and then set them to work. If they failed to do the required job they lost a dollar for that day. At the end of the month they kept whatever remained. As the year progressed, the chores that had been practiced the month before were retained, so that in the first month they were earning a dollar a day just for keeping their rooms neat, and by the end of the year they were keeping their rooms neat, doing their own laundry, helping to plan, prepare, and clean up after meals, and more, all for that same dollar. Halfway through she also instituted a jobs board that enabled kids to earn extra on additional projects.

It was generous of Wyma to give readers insight into her family. I always appreciate hearing how normal my kids are -- other people's kids give more or less the same kind of trouble in more or less the same proportions as mine.

It also was reassuring; my kids have been helping set the table, clear dishes, make beds, dust, sweep, empty the dishwasher, sort dirty laundry, fold and put away clean laundry, and help out with the grocery shopping since they were very small. Wyma's kids didn't know what produce was. So at least I knew I hadn't been slacking as much as I feared in the personal responsibility aspect of child-rearing.

But as interesting as I found Wyma's insights, the book was lacking as a parenting guide. It really is just an account of how things went for one family. Her kids never failed; the dollar and her word seemed to be sufficient motivation for them. If I promised my kids a dollar a day to clean their rooms and make their beds, I'm pretty sure they'd earn only maybe half the money (at best), because they are so unaccustomed to having a regular income. Not getting a dollar they wouldn't have gotten anyway makes little impact on them. Nobody in her family ever seemed to balk at whatever she was asking of them, or if they did she didn't talk at all about how she coped with the resistance. They complained and maybe rolled their eyes, and then they did it.

They also never seemed to fail even when they made the attempt. Failure happens, even when the kids are moved by a generous spirit, as when my six-year-old broke a glass while emptying the dishwasher. He was so excited to help and show how capable he was that he was moving fast. The look on his face when he dropped it was heartbreaking. Of course he was barefoot, so my reaction was "DON'T MOVE!" because I was afraid he would step on the glass and cut his feet. But he heard yelling and thought he was in trouble. When we got everything cleaned up he said "I guess I should just go back to putting away the silverware." Of course I reassured him and he got over it; the point is that her kids rarely failed at what they attempted, except from resistance or laziness (as when they were cleaning the bathroom), nor does she address how to draw the line between a job done poorly but with good intentions and a job just flat out done poorly.

Another difficulty I had with this book is that her conservative political bent sometimes manifests as though her kids are liberals (she actually uses the word "socialists") who expect handouts, while she, the responsible conservative, wants them to be responsible for themselves. As a liberal, I really object to her position, but since it doesn't cover the majority of her book, just kind of flavors it, it is not a reason to avoid it altogether. I do want to point out,  however, that liberals want their children to be as empowered and capable as conservatives do, and that if she does continue writing like this that I would find her work more compelling if she left the liberal-conservative thing out of it. And also, used the word "socialists" correctly.

I'm not sure if Wyma meant Cleaning House to be a parenting book or a memoir; she did almost no research to support her assertions. She mentioned Michael Gurian's Wonder of Boys a few times, but it sounded like she had heard it recounted to her, rather than read it herself. There were a few other snippets of professional advice scattered throughout, but mostly it was the anecdotal sort from other families, so helpful, but not necessarily authoritative. Surely over the course of a year she could have read his book herself (especially since he blurbed hers for her)? And perhaps one or two others on similar topics?

Overall, I'd give Cleaning House 3 1/2 stars out of 5. I take a full star off for not being specific enough about resistance and failure, and half a star for putting a conservative slant on a topic that does not need to be politicized. If you'd like a jumping off place for helping teach your children to be useful, confident adults, you could do worse than this book. I just wish that Wyma had done rather better.

*Kay Wills Wyma's Twelve Steps: 

1. Making beds and keeping clutter off the floor
2. Planning and cooking a meal, cleaning up kitchen afterwards
3. Working outdoors
4. Making income
5. Cleaning the bathrooms
6. Laundry
7. Small maintenance/repair jobs around the home
8. Hospitality
9. Working as a Team
10. Running errands
11. Service to others
12. Good manners

What Is a Simple Life?

It's been quiet around here for a few weeks because I've been stumped.

A friend of mine recently posted a question on Facebook: "What is simple living?"

Well, don't I feel like a bonehead for not asking that question of myself in the first place.

Seven other people responded to her question. Some said simple living with kids was not possible. Some described what was essentially a peaceful afternoon. One said, no, who cares about a simple life? Embrace its craziness!

My response to her post went like this: For me it's a matter of making only the choices that are important to my quality of life, including commitments and belongings. It's not having to spend time taking care of things and having more time and mental space to do, think, create, and share.

I thought about her question a bit more and added: I think a simplified life requires constant vigilance because of the difficulty of saying no.

But now that I've had three weeks to stew about the question, and look around at different ways that people have tried to answer that question, I think I have at least something to throw out there. As a start. And I reserve the right to change my mind or expand on the ideas I'm kicking out here today.

The original impetus for simplifying came during a time when I felt totally overwhelmed with my life and unable to make time to do the things that were important to me.  I've already recounted how I discovered The Zero Waste Home and the impact Bea Johnson had on me. Johnson actually has two simultaneous endeavors going on at once in her household: zero waste living and also "simplifying," which when you read what she's actually doing sounds more like minimalism.

In one of her posts Bea Johnson said that Little House on the Prairie was her favorite TV show because of the simplicity of life that it portrayed. Ignoring the many anachronisms from that show (my personal favorite being how people drove their gigantic wagons pulled by gigantic horses around just like they were driving a station wagon... but I suppose I can laugh about that another time), I want to point out that if you actually look at the sets they are chock full of stuff, including lots of multiples -- something Johnson finds offensive in her own home life. Moreover, I don't know what's "simple" about, for example, rousing all your children, aged 5 and up, out of their warm beds at two or three in the morning to save the corn crop from an unseasonable snap freeze, as Laura Ingalls Wilder recounts in Farmer Boy. Or in eating the same meal over and over and over again for weeks at a time because there is absolutely no other food available. It's not simplified living if you can't choose where you simplify.

But I digress.

So what is simple living? I think it's focused living. I have some goals and some values.

• To live in a way that hurts as few people as possible
• To never stop learning or changing my mind about what I thought I knew
• To be kind and supportive of other people
• To be healthy for my entire adult life so that when I'm old I don't die infirm
• To be as good a writer as I can possibly be
• To be pretty (I know it's vain, but it's true)
• To make all the choices that reflect how rich and varied life can be that are consistent with the path I have set for myself

For my children, I want:

• Good health and an excellent sense of themselves
• Diligence in the presence of failure or uncertainty
• Habits that will make it easier for them to make the choices that will make them happy
• The time and leisure to do childish things
• The opportunity to find out what they love and what they are good at

For our entire family:

• Gratitude for all that blesses us

Anything that distracts me from these goals and values for myself or my family is complicating my life. This doesn't mean that the life I have laid out for myself is simple in itself; in many ways it's a lot more complicated than living unconsciously. Just the goal of being healthy, for instance, requires a lot of effort. I have to determine what kind of diet will best further that goal; I have to be conscious of what is actually going into the foods I bring home and prepare, or what I choose when we eat out. I have to make the effort to make exercise a part of my schedule, and figure out how to make it part of my kids' schedule as well, so that they will learn it as an ordinary and necessary part of life, like sleep. When I fall off the wagon (as I do regularly) I have to pay attention to what I let distract me from my goals and make the effort to rebuild in a way that won't set me up for failure again.

No, this kind of life is not simple, but it's a lot simpler than relying on (and paying for) ten prescriptions with all the complications (read: side effects) they bring. It's simpler than being miserable for being fat and not fitting my favorite clothes and thereby violating my goal of being pretty. It's simpler than trying to undo the consequences of not making the effort -- and that I know for sure, because I'm doing it now. It's simpler than wondering what life could have been if I had lived it according to my own desires.

Owning too much stuff also distracts from my goals and values. I can't be grateful for my blessings if I'm drowning in them. Not being able to find things is my biggest, biggest peeve ever. I resent and loathe the waste of every minute spent looking for things that are buried under things I don't care about. Downsizing from the Big House has been a great improvement on this problem -- there are only so many places any given thing can be in this little house -- but it still happens occasionally. I do not want to spend my life looking for things. That is so not simple.

Of course the lists above are only partial, but it probably would help me a lot to make a more thorough, personal list for my own use to keep me on track. As my children get older I'd like to distill it into a family motto that we could post in our home, something they have had a say in so that they have a stake in living it. I'm also finding that over-simplifying is not a good idea. Living in a little rental house in a walkable neighborhood is nice in many ways, but it precludes the vegetable garden I enjoyed, and the decorating possibilities that make me feel creative and capable. That's not simple, it's unnecessarily ascetic and unsustainable. Finding and maintaining a simple life is, I think, a constant work in progress.

If you want to explore all kinds of ways of adopting a simple life, here are some of the resources I looked at while I was stewing over this post:

Since I'm a Wikipedia junky I'll share the definition for simple living found there:

Simple living encompasses a number of different voluntary practices to simplify one's lifestyle. These may include reducing one's possessions or increasing self-sufficiency, for example. Simple living may be characterized by individuals being satisfied with what they need rather than want. Although asceticism generally promotes living simply and refraining from luxury and indulgence, not all proponents of simple living are ascetics. Simple living is distinct from those living in forced poverty, as it is a voluntary lifestyle choice.  

Adherents may choose simple living for a variety of personal reasons, such as spirituality, health, increase in "quality time" for family and friends, work–life balance, personal taste, frugality, or reducing personal ecological footprint and stress. Simple living can also be a reaction to materialism and conspicuous consumption. Some cite socio-political goals aligned with the anti-consumerist or anti-war movements, including conservation, degrowth, social justice, ethnic diversity, tax resistance and sustainable development.

The Year of Less and The Complete Guide to Imperfect Homemaking (same mom runs both blogs)

Unclutterer 

Miss Minimalist and The Joy of Less, both by Francine Jay

Think Simple Now

Zen Habits 

The Simplicity Collective

Liberal Simplicity

Simple Mom

Right-Sized?

I have been living in 1470 square feet with three children for four months now.  For the most part it's going well.  But I'm not sure this is how I want to live for the rest of their childhood.  Or, frankly, even much beyond the end of our current lease.

I don't want much.  I want maybe a foot more space in each room.  I'd like some delineation between the dining area and the living area.  I'd like a little more space for the children to play -- especially now that my six year old has become totally obsessed with Beyblades and had to be restrained from shouting "One... Two... Three... Let 'er RIP!!!" at six in the morning, and the sound of battle tops hitting the wood floors at seven on a Saturday morning is hard to sleep over.

I would love to have a kitchen where I can open the refrigerator and the dishwasher at the same time.  With enough counter space that the kids and I could stretch a really good cooking project, or playdough, or art, or... well, just about anything.  But I would like to have enough room for more than a single person in the kitchen.  It doesn't have to be huge, just roomy enough for us to spend time together.

I'd like to have a separate office from my husband's.  The mostly-empty bookshelves behind his desk cramp the room up and make me a little crazy, as I'm sure my piles make him.  I've tried, but I've never in my life managed to live without them. I know he'd love for me to figure that out. Or we could just work apart.

I'd like to be able to host book club at my house without waking up the children with our wine-fueled conversational catharses.

So much for the minimalist dream.

I'm sure some of my squeezed feeling is left over from the quiet I was able to experience escaping to a quiet couch in the upstairs of the house my entire family shared in Hilton Head, or the peace of hanging out in the screen porch at my in-laws' house.  And that summer vacation can make even the most harmonious families a little short with each other. But I would really love 300 more square feet and a garage.

Is that so bad?

I'm feeling a little torn. Proponents of responsible, sustainable living advocate for smaller houses and we're reminded by authors of money-management articles like this October, 2011 article from U.S. News & World Report that big houses are expensive in more than just the mortgage payment.  "Do you really want to live in a home that's 2,500 square feet or larger?"

Yes. Yes, I do.

But, chides the article,

If you take a quick look back, you'll see that historically, smaller homes have been the norm for most of us. In 1950, the average home size was 983 square feet. In 2004, at the height of the building boom, the average home size was 2,340 square feet. That's an enormous difference just over the span of a few decades.

I'm going to take slight issue with this.

First off, if people actually liked living in tiny houses, the houses wouldn't have grown. But they have, and not only the new houses; the 1939 house we bought in Falls Church, Virginia had an addition tacked on to the side that the previous owner had added in the 1960's. That addition consisted of a master bedroom & bathroom, a large family room, and a screen porch.  The kitchen had been remodeled in such a way that the refrigerator was moved into a walk-in pantry just outside the kitchen; it was arranged this way so they didn't have to change the basic footprint of the kitchen when enlarging the counter space and adding a dishwasher. The basement, which isn't included in square footage but which is a major bonus to living space, had been subdivided to provide an "illegal" bedroom for one of the couples' two daughters.  When we stripped the wallpaper from the original upstairs secondary bedroom, we noticed a head-shaped dent in the plaster wall and joked that the daughter must have been exiled to the basement after a massive adolescent fight between the two girls.

When we remodeled the house in 2004, the previous owner stopped by with his daughter and asked if he could see what we'd done.  I was a little nervous about this; we'd stripped the house, for the most part, back to the foundations, and built off the original footprint, out the back, and up, to double the size of the house as it had previously stood in all its dated, slanting horror.  (I guess I'm showing that my interest in minimalist living is pretty recent).  This was partly necessary, because the fabric-coated wiring and DIY addition weren't aging well, and it was partly... well, because we could, and we wanted to.

But as Joe, by then in his 80's, and his daughter, who was probably in her early 50's, walked through the house, all he kept saying was, "Yes, this is what I had in mind.  Yes, that's what I was going for.  Oh, I see you put the kitchen on the screen porch; that's exactly what I was going to do."

The daughter asked to see the basement, and when we got to that tiny illegal bedroom, she sighed and said "I really loved that room."

"Really?" I asked, speechless.

"Oh, yes," she answered. She was glass-eyed remembering the past. "I was so happy to get some space away from my family."

Joe bought that house in 1962.  He wasn't appalled and looking back at the glory days of a happier, simpler time.  He wanted what we had managed to build. And we were able to build as we did because of the floor plan he put together during the time that big living was supposedly anathema. I'll tell you something else: Joe didn't build the house bigger to hold more stuff. The closets were never the best part of that house. In fact, the coat closet next to the 1939 front door couldn't even handle regular hangers, because it was too shallow for the door to close if I put a coat on a hanger (it did have a hanger bar, which I never understood). When Joe tacked the addition on to the side of the house, he built a new front door as well (right next to the original front door, which we always thought was hilarious). But he didn't add a coat closet. His family didn't care about stuff.  They just wanted space to stretch their legs a bit. That's true for all the other many, many World War II era houses that were built in the DC metro area that have little box additions tacked on to the side or back (trust me, that means most of them).

And then "average size" is a meaningless statistic.  What does it include? My first studio apartment in Atlanta? The 18,000 square foot, eight bedroom mansion for sale in San Francisco (and all the other estates like it) right now?  Let's be specific, people! Tell me how houses have changed for a specific kind of household in a specific part of the country -- and tell me how those people are living now, too. There might be good reasons for living smaller, but "because that's how they lived before" is not one of them, especially when that assertion is poorly supported.

I realize that I'm writing contrary to "Simply Richer Living." I'm sorry. I'm trying to process what is beginning to feel like mutually exclusive states of being: The desire to simplify my life and the desire to live more easily and fully. I want my little guy to wake up early in the morning and practice his passion.  I also want to be able to sleep till my appointed wake-up time (and for my four-year-old to do so as well).  I like being close to my kids wherever we are in the house, and I also want to be able to get a little quiet for some part of every day so that I actually want to talk to them. I want to be able to entertain my friends at home, not at a restaurant.

These desires are new in a historical sense. An interesting paper, "Housing: Then, Now, and Future" by Moya K. Mason points out that:

The novelty of our age is that how we use the space in our homes is continually evolving. And, as we transform these spaces, they transform us. These transformations are the result of demographic, economic, lifestyle, environmental, and technological changes and pressures. Home offices and media rooms are new spaces, while old spaces like living rooms are now being used as computer rooms. Video entertainment, games, computers, and the Internet serve to isolate, and also demand more personal space, separating us from the people we live with.

Bill Bryson's At Home makes a similar case with much more entertaining language, for anyone who is interested in the history of our home space. But essentially: Living rooms are computer rooms now, because we use computers heavily in most of daily life, and because we entertain more casually, with friends welcome in our "family" rooms and our kitchens. Home offices are the result of a greater diversity in the work force, including women who work from home, and a greater complexity in home management needs.  The new configuration of our homes serves both to isolate us, but also to make more of our relationships less formal, more genuine.


Certainly isolation is a danger of a larger home space, and for sure that's not what I want. But my family and I don't live the kind of life people lived in 1940 or earlier; we live now. Part of living now is that people actually live quite a lot in their homes.  Kitchens were smaller because frozen dinners were supposed to do away with the need to cook every night, and a more elaborate food network meant that you didn't need to have the skill or space to preserve at home. Our reliance on the car and the decay of community means kids have to live at home instead of out prowling the territory that could be covered on a bicycle (without a helmet). What I want is to figure out how to create a lifestyle that is consistent with my values of creating intimacy with the people I care about while still having the space to recharge and be the sort of person with whom they want to be intimate. I don't want to be obnoxious about the fact that I can have these things. I just want a little leg room.

OK, it doesn't have to be 2500 square feet. Am I asking for too much? In a world where way too many people live in poverty and the earth is going to hell speedy-quick, then definitely yes. In the world I live in... I don't know what is right. What are my obligations to the world, and to what extent am I entitled to live, well, selfishly? I don't know. I hope I figure it out some day.

In the meantime, a basement would ease things here significantly.

Jane Austen Wrote Pride and Prejudice

A watercolour and pencil sketch of Austen, believed to have been drawn from life by her sister Cassandra (c. 1810)
from Wikipedia

Yes, duh, right?

But think about the simplicity of that sentence: Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice; focus on that verb, wrote.  How long do you think she spent on it?  When you think of Jane Austen in the act of writing, do you imagine her just sitting, steadily composing from "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife" to "And they were both ever sensible of the warmest gratitude towards the persons who, by bringing her into Derbyshire, had been the means of uniting them" as though she were reading it off the back of her skull into the pen hand?

Photo from The Heroine's Bookshelf

That kind of seamless composition is sort of what's implied in a short little verb like write.  After all, we write grocery lists, emails, notes, and messages all the time, right?  What is Twitter?  Writing (sort of).  And a work like Pride and Prejudice is so normal, 200 years after publication, that it's impossible to imagine it any other way.  (Short plug for one of my favorite authors, Jasper Fforde, who in The Eyre Affair imagines Jane Eyre radically differently, and then, in an insane and creative course of events, returns it to its familiar composition).  So of course she just sat down and wrote it.

Except that she didn't.

According to Wikipedia, Austen began the novel that eventually became Pride and Prejudice in October 1796, at the age of 20.  She completed the inital draft, called First Impressions, in August 1797, having read it to her family along the way.  The Austens were a very literate family, and although I don't have documentation to hand, I know from having read several biographies of Jane Austen that they did not refrain from sharing their opinions about what worked and what didn't as she wrote.  

In November 1797, Austen's father attempted to have First Impressions published, without success.  Jane Austen then set the work aside and continued on other projects, including the epistolary novel Elinor and Marianne into the third-person work that became Sense and Sensibility.  She is not documented as having returned to Pride and Prejudice until about 1811 (although quite a lot about her life is very poorly documented owing to family censorship), and it was published in the form in which we read it today in 1813.  

So what does this have to do with Simply Richer Living?

It has to do with expectations.  

Six words: Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice.  Represents approximately three years of effort.  We don't have any documentation for how long Austen expected to take to write her story.  We don't know if she expected to rank among the great English novelists, or if she wanted to, or what she would have thought of such an achievement -- although we do have enough general indication of her character, and of her attitude towards the Prince Regent, the future George IV, to be able to guess at what she would have thought of that specific ambition.  We don't even really know if she was satisfied with her work, and if not, what she found wanting.  

But I can tell you, I feel very strongly about Pride and Prejudice and especially about my favorite of Austen's novels, Persuasion, which almost moves me to tears at the thought of what we missed at having such a sharp, observant woman die at 41, just when her vision would have been liberated from so many of the trivia things that obsess us in our youth.  

So... not that writing a great (or seven) works of literature is comparable to reducing one's personal footprint in the world and creating a more efficient life, but is it not true that we should expect that any worthwhile work should take some effort, a lot of time, a fair amount of self-doubt and uncertainty, and a lot of iterations before we get all the way to where we want to be.  Or as far as we can reasonably get under the circumstances?  The sentence I need to clean out my house is only seven words.  It includes a phrase, clean out, that implies a one-time endeavor requiring no particular thought (aren't we all engaged in cleaning activities on a daily basis?), and, if we decide on some arbitrary deadline based on a move or a party or houseguests, should be readily achievable in the time allotted.

Think deeper.  Imagine Jane Austen fretting over just how to get Elizabeth to change her mind about Darcy, how miserable she should permit Jane to be, how to balance Bingley between being sweet and easy-going and a complete imbecile.  Imagine her trying to figure out how to make the time between balls pass.  Imagine the uproar in her family when she married Charlotte Lucas to Mr. Collins.  And then, just as Jane Austen did, reach out your hand, and start the process.  Move one step further, and then one more step, acknowledging that it might take multiple iterations to make it what you want, until you have completed the product that is the best you can do with the resources available.  And present it to the world, and be at peace.

Biographies of Jane Austen*:

Jane Austen Her Life and Letters a Family Record by William Austen Leigh (a relative)

Jane Austen: A Life by Claire Tomalin (my personal favorite)

Jane Austen's Letters by Deirdre LeFaye

Memoir of Jane Austen by James Edward Austen Leigh (by her eldest great nephew within the lifetime of nieces and nephews who knew Austen personally)

Jane Austen: Her Life: The Definitive Portrait of Jane Austen: Her Life, Her Art, Her Family, Her World by Park Honan (not one of my favorites, but if you click this Amazon link one of the Amazon reviewers mentions a number of author Austen biographies with which I am not familiar)

Jane Austen: A Life by David Nokes

The Life of Jane Austen by John Halperin

Other Informative Non-Fiction Works:**

Jane Austen: The World of her Novels by Deirdre LeFaye

Jane Austen's World: The Life and Times of England's Most Popular Author by Maggie Lane

The World of Jane Austen by Nigel Nicolson

And if you think you don't like Jane Austen:

Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen by Fay Weldon (a personal favorite)

*Note that I am not monetized or reimbursed by Amazon in any way; links are provided solely for the convenience of the reader.  These are, for the most part, either biographies with which I am personally familiar or those (Honan, Nokes, and Halperin; I can't remember which of the three I've read already) which are widely acknowledged as having some quality.  As Virginia Woolf observed, "We have lives enough of Jane Austen...", so there are many, many more to choose from, of varying degrees of quality, but this is a good starting list.  For a much shorter, more subjective but very loving memoir of Jane Austen, read the preface to the combined edition of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, which was written by her favorite brother, Henry Austen, shortly after her death.  

**Although these works are not meant to be strictly biographical, they do generally follow many of the events of Austen's life and therefore have biographical qualities.