A couple of weeks ago, I was bemused by an article in the Sunday NY Times about downsizing. What seemed bizarre was that the article was in the Jobs Section, and it was profiling a new group of workers, “downsizing specialists”. These people target their efforts at the ugly process of disposal. Effectively, they carry out the grunt work of your decisions, but the decision has to remain in your hands.
What seemed strange was that the act of downsizing was treated like an event. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
We are currently setting up a household that is half the size of the house where we raised our kids. We also have some additional items from other places. Now, we have to winnow this collection of all of the stuff that we or our kids will never use again. We have done this before, but never with the sense of finality we have today.
But this is a process, not an event. It may take six months or a year to ride the process out, but the process has its steps that should be respected. Specifically,
1. Find the downsized home that is workable for you. Err on the side of smaller square feet rather than larger.
2. Move everything you can to it. Now is the time to use those items that you were saving for special times. Your special time is now.
3. Place the items you will not actively require during the next six months into the garage or a second bedroom rather that in a storage locker. You do not want to be able to ignore these excess possessions; you want to be inconvenienced by them.
4. Segment these possessions into personal memories, family keepsakes, and those with some commercial value.
5. Attack the commercial value items first. Make a detailed list of all these items and share it with your children, relatives, friends, and neighbors. If none show any interest, list the larger items on Craig’s List and the smaller ones on eBay. Community garage sales and consignment shops can provide another outlet.
6. Keep at the commercial items until you clear them out. Some charities are kind enough to accept a wide variety of items, and you will use them at the end of the process to clear out the leftovers.
7. Once the commercial items have been addressed, you are finished with the easy part. Next come the family heirlooms. Now you have to struggle with the guilt of challenging the heirloom status. Does Uncle Vinny’s bowling trophy really qualify? If you don’t intend to put it on display, does it really qualify as a treasure? If these is another family member who would really treasure it, now may be the time to present them with this gift. There are some guilt issues here, but the process does make you focus on the few things that do really matter to you. The rest should loose their heirloom status and be discarded.
8. Items marked by personal memories, photos and small trinkets, should be kept till last. These are the items that remind you of the times when love touched your life. Typically, they don’t take a lot of space, but they do deserve a careful review during which they can be savored. During that review, you should resurrect some old items for display and make other more easily accessible. These items, and their stories, are what you should share with your loved ones during holidays and special events. The treasures are the memories themselves. The items have values because they ground them.
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