Lately as I ponder a planned retirement from full time work by the end of this year I’ve been thinking about what I’d like life to be like post retirement and have decided that downsizing my life in general will be an important part of that time. I’ve been on sort of a downsizing journey in my life over the past 12 years since a divorce and although I feel that I’ve made good progress getting down to a 2 bed, 2 bath apartment I would like to do all I can to reduce my fixed costs by downsizing even further. The problem I’m running into with these aspirations comes down to…stuff!
Stuff are the things that we accumulate over the years that manage to stick with us wherever we go. In this modern era stuff is easy to come by, but strangely difficult to get rid of. Most people living in modern American society understand this I’m sure. When visiting family members that live in a housing development I often see open 2 and 3 car garages packed with…stuff! Have you ever wondered why you have so much of this or that in your home? It could be books, coffee cups, linens, plates, stuffed animals, shoes or boxes filled with…stuff that you haven’t even thought of for years. Only recently I’ve been working on addressing things I have around my apartment that I either have too much of or pay absolutely no attention to. The goal is to reduce, if not eliminate, such things from my life in service of my plan to eventually live in a one bedroom apartment. But while it’s easy to identify the things that could be gotten rid of its SO…DAMN…HARD to pull the trigger on those plans.
Going back to my journey to downsize that started 12 years ago, I reached peak stuff in the 5 bed, 4 bath 3,500 square foot house I lived in with my family at the time. We had lots of furniture and kids things, and I had accumulated healthy print book and dvd collections, to name a few types of things. When my marriage ended and my now ex-wife moved out with the two kids I was left to pack up what remained. It was a sad time considering the circumstances and I had just a week to complete the job before the house would be sold. There was no time to contemplate the situation. I just packed box after box of what was left and prepared the furniture the best I could before the movers arrived. What astonished me was how much there was remaining and my only choice, since my alternate accommodation was a small one bedroom apartment, was to have all the things put into storage. Problem solved…but not really.
The storage business in America has boomed over the years and it’s easy to see why. Even though average people are living in larger homes than ever there is still more stuff than people can fit in their homes. So we rent storage rooms of various sizes. For my trouble when I had the house goods moved into storage I paid $125 per month until I could figure out what to do next. It really burned me to think that I was paying that much each month just to maintain a space for things I wasn’t even using. Eventually I moved into a larger apartment, had movers transfer about 25% of the house goods to the apartment, but I still had the storage unit plus the apartment rent. Still not a great solution. My next task was to start figuring out what I could get rid of so I could downsize the storage unit to a less expensive one. Exhausted after moving the house, finding a new apartment and then moving into the apartment I procrastinated and paid the storage bills in the meantime. So by the time I planned to continue downsizing I had forgotten a lot of what was in the boxes in storage in the first place.
I remember some of those trips to the storage facility, being determined to make major dents in addressing the abundance of stuff and then only addressing a portion of it. Even worse, I more often identified things I’d like to bring back to the apartment. I did my best work on boxes of books and DVDs which I mostly donated to libraries. Ironically, after years I probably regret doing that more than anything. The other thing is that I am by nature a person who doesn’t like waste and so doing anything other than donating items that I thought were still usable really bothered me. I know people who have no qualms trashing just about anything but I’m not one of those people. I have discard guilt for sure. That’s another massive obstacle in my way in terms of downsizing. Eventually I found a Goodwill location that would accept donations of many types of things as long as they were in serviceable condition. So I was able to make slow progress, but progress nonetheless on downsizing.
Now I’d like to say that I made unimpeded progress over the years in terms of downsizing the stuff in my life but that wouldn’t be true. I took a detour by eventually moving half way across the country into a 4 bed, 2 bath house which also happened to have a 1 car garage and a basement. So even though I made progress during my 3 years in the apartment reducing the size of my storage room there was still way too much stuff and I paid a handsome price to bring what was left with me. I rationalized that since everything could fit in the house I would then have more time to work on downsizing. The problem once again was that once I got settled in the house I was too burnt out to even consider all the stuff I knew needed getting rid of. In fact, I reveled in discovering things I hadn’t seen in years that I could put to use again, like small kitchen appliances! I also needed furniture for my kids’s bedrooms since the move meant they’d spend more time with me, and equipment to help maintain the front and back yards that came with the house. More stuff! The struggle is as real as it can be.
After three and a half years in the house I finally became committed to the change in my life that has made a considerable difference in terms of the amount of possessions I have and the space that I need. I decided to sell the home and go back to apartment life. I researched local donation centers as a way to minimize my discard guilt. I finally started biting the bullet on things that, for some unknown reason, I could not part with and that included donating 3 of my 5 guitars. My kids had outgrown a number of things I’d been keeping for years and I was able to donate a lot of those things to neighbors down the street who had young children. I was able to pass on some furniture and tools to other neighbors. The lawn equipment that I’d accumulated I gladly gave to the new owners of the house. And for some other things that I knew I had no business keeping I called a junk service and had it taken away. Finally some real progress! Less stuff meant less moving costs and the ability to move into a smaller place. Through the combination of donating to organizations, giving to neighbors and using the junk service I was able to get down to a 2 bed, 2 bath apartment with no outside garage or storage room, which is where I’m at today.
I feel like I’m nearing the last mile of my downsizing journey, but the last mile can be the most difficult. I still have things in drawers, things hanging my my closet, things in bins under the bed and in a small storage room on my screen in porch. Not to mention my furniture. There is certainly more donating and more trashing in my future. But the mental blocks are still there. “Oh, but I might need this or that.” “Oh, this has sentimental value.” Etc. Etc. That’s the stuff paradox in a nut shell I suppose. One the one hand we can feel burdened by our stuff but on the other hand it offers us comfort. It’s very strange but it’s a challenge I know that I have to face. This process isn’t a personal punishment or a complete rejection of modern life. The end goal is affordable, efficient living. Breaking the habit of needing so much when in reality relying on so few things daily is a worthy bonus I suppose. I’ve come this far, so it’s worth the effort to do what I can to make it even farther.
In The Midst Of A Journey 