Let It Go - Peter Walsh
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to an experience that could be one of the most rewarding times of your life.
Don’t believe me? I understand. You’ve probably gotten the impression that downsizing should be a fear-inducing task. Honestly, how could it not be?
As you travel through life, you encounter milestones that require you to comb through the stuff you’ve gathered: relocating to a new city; getting married and combining homes with another person; hitting tough times that send you into a smaller home; kids growing up and leaving the family home empty (and unnecessarily large); or the death of a spouse or parent.
When you downsize for these changes, you’re likely to confront some of life’s deepest questions. That’s one reason why the process is so often painful. Downsizing requires us to confront our insecurities, our relationships, and our own mortality. The stuff you sift through has the power to evoke deep emotions and memories, which can easily derail you.
Downsizing can require you to shrink a houseful of possessions so they’ll fit into a new space that may be much smaller than what you have now. Many of these possessions are things you really, really like. They’re probably things you couldn’t possibly live without! To make the mission even more challenging, you’re likely working on an uncomfortably tight deadline.
Sound familiar?
Or maybe you’re facing another common type of downsizing scenario: the task of wading through a lifetime of items that belonged to someone else, like your parents, grandparents, or other loved ones. Their home contains stuff that might be important to you . . . but you probably have even less time to manage this kind of downsizing.
Sound familiar?
While standing on the brink of a downsizing project, you might be terrified that you’ll make a bad decision, throw out the wrong thing, alienate your family, infuriate your parents, or just disappear into an abyss of clutter and never be seen or heard from again!
Sound familiar?
It does to me. The challenge of downsizing the possessions in a home—whether their own or someone else’s—petrifies many people. I know this well, because I’ve helped thousands deal with the clutter in their homes. Thousands more have asked for guidance on what to keep and what to let go while moving or downsizing. I’ve also had to downsize under trying circumstances that faced my own family.
My mother cared for my father for years during his long illness. Four years after he passed away, her failing health brought her to an assisted living facility. Old age and steadily advancing dementia made her last few years difficult, and then, hard as it was to believe, she was gone, too.
My younger sister, Julie, and I stood outside the facility on a chilly Australian day just after her passing. We were there to clean out her room. Of the few possessions Mum still owned, we donated most to a local charity. The rest fit into the two boxes Julie and I clutched in the cold.
She turned to me and asked, “Mum lived for 92 years, and here each of us is carrying a cardboard box. Is this the sum of her life?”
Those boxes held the last few treasures that were important to my mother, Kath, at the very end of her exceptional life. Growing up in a poor farming family, she didn’t complete the 8th grade. Instead, she left home at 14 and traveled hundreds of miles across Australia to train as a nurse. A few years later, caring for wounded soldiers would be her contribution during World War II.
By the time she was 34, she had 5 children under the age of 7 and would go on to add 2 more kids to our family. My siblings raised 12 children of their own, who all became successful, well-educated professionals.
My sister and I kept only our mother’s hairbrush, rosary beads, photos, and notes she had jotted down about her family to jog her memory.
That was it. These few things were the last of the mementos that could represent our mother. All the other objects that she had touched and used during her life had been distributed long ago.
I finally found the words to respond to Julie’s question. “Mum’s life was not about the stuff,” I said. What made her life shine had nothing to do with any of the objects she owned. Whether she held on to it for a minute or 90 years, her stuff was ultimately finite and temporary.
The intangible things Mum left behind—her laugh, her wicked sense of humor, and her wise advice—will live