not valid reasons to call an item worthy.
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Pace Yourself, and Set the Right Target
Two of the biggest factors that lead to fatigue when you’re downsizing are doing too much at once and aiming for perfection. To avoid exhausting yourself, especially if your energy or fitness levels are limited, commit to spending just 2 hours a day sorting through your belongings. (If you’re comfortable devoting more time, go right ahead!)
Don’t try to do everything perfectly. Attempting to do so will leave you overwhelmed, frustrated, and exhausted. Aim for good enough. That’s an adequate goal that motivates you to get the job done.
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Now, keep in mind that you also need to establish that you’ll have room for these things at your next stop. I’ll show you how to do that in Chapters 7 and 8.
It’s quite likely that you’ll have several options for distributing I-Might-Need-It Items that you don’t want to take with you. That’s because these items might well be valuable or useful to someone else.
Maybe these are hand-me-down family items that you or your kids no longer need, but you’d like to offer to your nieces, nephews, and other extended family.
Or maybe a nonfamily member would want to buy your clothes, furniture, and other items you’re letting go. Should you sell this stuff online? Do you have time to arrange a garage sale? Do you have enough stuff for an estate sale? Or do you donate it to charity for a tax write-off? In the next section, I’ll walk you through these strategies.
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Late-in-Life Moves Gave Couple More Reasons to Downsize
Donna and Bruce Vickroy, ages 69 and 75 respectively, think they’re in their final home—or as Donna puts it, their “feet-first-out house.” But after three moves in recent years, they’re keeping their possessions pared down to a manageable level. Just in case.
They made their first move after Bruce took an early retirement offer. After a “huge estate sale” to downsize their stuff, they left the San Francisco area for a smaller home east in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
Then their son got married and, a few years later, started a family. He wished the Vickroys could be closer so they could enjoy more grandparenting time. So Donna and Bruce found a rental back in the Bay Area and spent part of their time there. But after another grandchild arrived, they decided to sell their mountain home—and the country-appropriate furnishings they’d bought for it—and move back to the city permanently.
The first move “was harder for my husband than me. For the most part, it didn’t bother me to get rid of half the kitchen, half the linens, and most of the books,” she says. The downsizings have been “considerably easier” for them in subsequent moves—in part because they’re thinking more about the kind of legacy they want to leave.
After Donna and Bruce sorted through the belongings that their late parents left behind, which involved some heavy digging, the experience “made us so aware that you really should never do that to your children.” Now, when they want to unload an item from their home, they’ll offer it to their kids (without guilting them into taking it, Donna says).
“If there’s something you can use now, take it and love on it,” she tells them. “If not, we just don’t want to save it any longer. We don’t want you to have to deal with it later.” Her son, who is something of a minimalist, often passes on the offers. “But my son-in-law tells my daughter every time they leave, ‘You’ve been shopping at Mom-mart,’” she laughs.
At this stage in their lives, the couple is putting a higher priority on enjoying people rather than things. “In living so close to family and grandkids, we’ve just placed our values elsewhere. So the stuff doesn’t really matter that much anymore,” Donna says.
For holiday gifts, they may offer experiences that the family can share, like dinner and tickets to a performance. “This is far more meaningful,” she says. “And no one has to dust it.”
In their retirement, the Vickroys have fewer possessions to clean and organize. They don’t have the sense that they’re paying property taxes to maintain a home for extra stuff they don’t need. Well, not a lot of extra stuff, anyway.
“Yes, there are things that I hang on to,” Donna says. “I have a Longaberger basket collection that I’d love to sell, but the market is horrible right now. I’ll either wait, or [my family] will have to use