Downsizing: Do It Now
Six years ago it became apparent it was time for downsizing. My kids were grown and gone (and no one living in the basement). Who needs 3200 sq feet of living space for just one person – or possibly two. So I did it. I bought a little house (foreclosed property, in need of work and cheap). 1500 square feet. Leaving some antiques and several sets of dishes behind, I moved. I though tI had done a great job of ridding myself of tons of clutter, 30 years of accumulated possessions I no longer needed. Until Tom entered my life with his 3500sq. feeet of possessions. Many trips to the charity resale shops later we finally shoehorned our way into our reduced living space, fairly amicably and comfortably. It was only on rare occasion that I missed my white antique dishes….and three rocking chairs.
We have had a reawakening this summer. With the death of my mother it fell to my siblings and me to sort out and close down the home she and my father shared for 50 years (that’s just since their last move). Oh my ! Now, a whole summer and three auction days later we are left with what no one wants and isn’t sale-able – rusty dented file cabinets that my dad couldn’t resist at the auctions he attended regularly, old shoes, and new that were being saved “for good”, magazines, plastic margarine tubs, tidbits of wire, all types and sizes.
When is a Hoarder not a Hoarder?
They weren’t hoarders, not the kind you see on TV .They weren’r surronded by 50 years of newspapers stacked to the ceilings.. No, my parents were just products of the Depression, who were raised in a time when you saved everything in case you might need it again someday. And they couldn’t pass up a bargain…..like a case of ranch dressing because it might never be that cheap again. Or a case of hominy….who eats hominy? Certainly no one in our family but it was a “good deal”. The leftovers would go into the margarine tub to be served up again in a day or two. The wrapping paper from a birthday present could be used for the next person’s birthday with a little trimming. And so on. But who needs three crockpots, or four cake savers, or 25 tea towels, or 42 chisels and 31 pair of pliers?
Love your children – downsizing starts – Now
Don’t leave this task for your kids to do when you die. Let them spend the summer at the pool or in Europe, or doing anything but cleaning out the remains of your life. It’s easy, my siblings and I learned to get caught up in the “oh, I remember when we used this for……” or ” I remember when Dad and I bought this on that trip to Alaska….”.
As we started sorting it became clear we were all going to relive our childhoods again by taking home stuff Mom and Dad hadn’t been able to get rid of…. How could we just toss it out or give it away if it meant something to them? A good rule: Tom and I decided for everything I brought from their house into our house something had to go out. At least that put a halt on unmitigated growth. It also helps to have a very sensible sister-in-law who is a master at re-cycling. Before my brother could lug it home she had it allocated to the Good Will or Women’s Shelter.
When Less is More
Out of sentimentality my sister considered buying the house we were dismantling, the house we grew up in. Then reality struck. What did she need with a 5 bedroom house? Her kids were grown and married. She and her husband had been living in an apartment for several years, quite comfortably. At 50, downsizing should be the word of the day, NOT adding more space. I can tell you and her from experience the more space you have the more stuff you find to fill it. When I moved into my big house in 2001 I was giddy with the number of empty closets I had – a whole wall of closets in the downstairs level. By the time I left that house there wasn’t an inch of space left behind any closet door. Most of it stuff I deleted from my life when I moved.
The big house had 4 bedrooms – seldom used but rooms that still needed to be cleaned and heated. Now living in a much smaller home with 2 bedrooms I can honestly say there is maybe once or twice a year we think of adding an additional room – as a spare bedroom or an office but if we lie down and take a nap the thought passes.
Get Inspired
Ryan Nicodemus and Joshua Fields Millburn are inspiring audiences across the nation. They are better known as The Minimalists. With an audience of over 2 million readers they have authored 5 non-fiction and three fiction books, and released a documentary called Minimalism, A Documentary about the Important Things., available on Netflix. It runs about an hour and will make you think about the stuff that has filled up your life. Their books, Minimalism: Live a Meaningful Life and Everything That Remains are a good place to start your adventure into downsizing.http://TheMinimalists.com
A couple of years ago another book hit the NY Times bestseller list called the life-changing magic of tidying up by Marie Kondo. It’s a book about decluttering and organizing. Her advice? ” Reduce until you reach the point where something click. As you reduce your belongings through the process of tidying,, you will come to a point where you suddenly know how much is just right for you.” http://www.amazon.com
Start Now
Downsizing doesn’t have to be done in one big bite. Start small. When it’s time to change out summer for winter wardrobe put aside any piece of clothing you did not wear this summer, for whatever reason – didn’t fit, didn’t go with anything else, didn’t like it once you got it home, whatever. Out it goes. Good Will, Salvation Army, City Mission – there are organizations out there just waiting for these items. Box them up. Put them in your car and take them away.
Closets are the best place to start. Who needs 13 sets of sheets or 20 bath towels? 6 sets of dishes, Your kids are now thinking about being middle-aged Your grandkids are teenagers Do you still need Chutes and Ladders? Those movies that you used to watch on your VCR player? OUT ! Books you bought at the dollar store or for book club but never finished? Half priced books will buy them from you.
16 Boxes of Books or How I lost $3000 in 3 years
I said a couple of paragraphs ago that I got rid a lot of stuff when I moved. One of those things was NOT books. I have had a love affair with reading and books since I was a young child. Fact is I still have many of those books. So many books that when I moved they wouldn’t all fit in my house so I rented storage space for them, knowing that during the long winter I would carefully go through them, give away the ones I’d already read and would nevere read again, read the ones I hadn’t read and find a place for the rest of them.
Three years later they were still in storage. At $99/mo for the storage space (also containing photo albums, art work, cases of wine (Tom’s- not mine), baby clothes – my kids are now 39 and 42. a bread maker, a Ronco pasta machine, an old printer- I had spent almost $3000 holding on to stuff I hadn’t looked at or used in 3 years. Deep breath and dive in. If it came into the house something else had to go.
Where do you go from here?
The only way to go is down. Take an inventory. What in each room do yoiu use each day? Each week? Once a year? Haven’t touched since 1984? Make a list of what you could part with- no second thoughts. Box it up and set it out for disposal. Offer it to a neighbor, maybe someone just starting out. Put it on e-bay or Craig’s list. Next the stuff you may have an attachment to but never use. Ask your kids if they want it. Chances are the answer will be a resounding NO! but ask anyway, then donate it. Once you start it will become a little easier but….
It’s a constant battle. I have hoarding tendencies. I prefer to call it collecting. But then I remember – my mom was a “collector” she had a bell collection, over 120 of them, and a glassware collection, three china cupboards full of glassware. A linen collection- enough table cloths to set up a banquet room. She was owned by her “collections”. She couldn’t move into a smaller house because she would have no room for her collections. In the end she lived in one room with her collections filling up the rest of a house she no longer needed.
Word of the day? DOWNSIZE !