Let It Go - Peter Walsh Page 0,23
there was a barrier.”
Sadly, they had little time to reconcile. Her sister developed pancreatic cancer the next year, and Nancy would soon be sorting through her sister’s possessions as trustee of her estate. “So what difference did any of this make? It made no difference,” Nancy says.
Now her life has reached another downsizing point. As she was sharing her story, she’d lived 3 years longer with advanced breast cancer than her doctor had predicted.
“When I got this diagnosis, it was a wake-up call. I had 33 bins of Christmas stuff! My kids don’t want that, and my husband doesn’t either. A friend of mine—who’s a pretty organized person—came over, we took everything out, and I got rid of so much. The stuff that’s left is the stuff the kids will probably want.”
The family treasures that came to Nancy through her parents and sister fill one steamer trunk and a cedar chest. She also keeps a few treasures on display in her home, so she can talk about them with family when they visit.
“Last year, I had another friend come over, and I told her all the stories of everything that was in my trunks. I wanted to write the stories down so my kids and nieces and nephews would know what this stuff was, since they weren’t there when my grandma was talking about it,” Nancy says.
Those stories will be waiting for these young people when they need them. Nancy knows they’ll make their own decisions about her belongings. “My daughter is not a sentimental person. But she did assure me, ‘Don’t worry, Mom. I’m not just going to go through and throw stuff away. I’ll look at what’s there, but I’m not taking it all,’” Nancy says. “My mom’s doll meant a lot to my mom, but I didn’t need to keep it. Even though this stuff means a lot to me, it doesn’t mean they have to keep it. But they have the opportunity to learn from it.”
* * *
On a related note, if you have multiple items of a similar nature that represent an activity you enjoy—whether they’re coins you’ve collected from international vacations or golf trophies from the local country club—give careful thought to whether you need all of them. One or two of them will be the most meaningful and important, which means that all the others dilute the impact of the best ones. Keep the few that mean the most to you.
When you do tasks like these, you’re honestly editing yourself. You’re cutting out the stuff you didn’t want anyway. You’re jettisoning the parts that no longer fit and turning the spotlight on the parts that you want to receive more attention. Meanwhile, you’re reallocating the focus you give to different areas of your life so that you’ll spend time on the elements that provide the most lasting value.
Now let’s move on to another obstacle that derails many a downsizing attempt. As Tolstoy said, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Poorly planned downsizing has a way of deeply disrupting even a happy family. But when you downsize the right way, you may be shocked by the harmony that a squabbling set of family members can find.
LET IT GO EXERCISE 3:
The Stories of My Life
Go back and review the worksheet you filled out at the end of Chapter 2. Look at the items you noted that most thoroughly describe your identity or the image that you want your heirs to remember. These will likely contribute to the pool of treasures that you take with you.
Choose five treasures from this group that you suspect you’ll be keeping. Jot down the story of each of these five treasures in the space below. (Or if you’d rather pull out your smartphone and make a brief video that tells the story, do that! Just make sure you send the video to a storage space that will keep it safe.)
Treasure:
* * *
Story:
* * *
* * *
* * *
Treasure:
* * *
Story:
* * *
* * *
* * *
Treasure:
* * *
Story:
* * *
* * *
* * *
Treasure:
* * *
Story:
* * *
* * *
* * *
Treasure:
* * *
Story:
* * *
* * *
* * *
CHAPTER 4
REFRAME YOUR “I DON’T HAVE TIME!” OBSTACLE
Over the years that I’ve been helping individuals and families declutter their homes, one of the most common excuses I’ve heard for why they couldn’t get organized is “I don’t have enough time.”
In these situations, I usually counter with, “You make time for what you think is