someone isn’t you?
What are you supposed to do with all the hard-earned stuff that represents the full scope of your life, or perhaps even several lifetimes’ worth of your family history? When you’re taking a leap forward to a new home, how much of this collection should come with you? When mom and dad depart, which things do you keep to prove that they were here?
These are questions that a lot of people must soon ask. Unfortunately, the traditional method of downsizing provides very few answers.
MILLIONS HEADED FOR A DOWNSIZING IN THE NEAR FUTURE
For much of their lives, the nation’s baby boomers have held an unusually powerful influence. These were the 72 million born between the mid-1940s and the mid-1960s, along with another 6 million of their peers who moved to America from other countries, like I did.
With such a large group rolling through life’s milestones at the same time, their interests became America’s interests. Their concerns became America’s concerns. In the coming years, many boomers will be in the mood to move into a smaller home, and this migration will turn up the volume on the national conversation about downsizing.
Currently, another 240,000 boomers turn 65 every month, according to the AARP. Though many will keep working, this has traditionally been regarded as retirement age.
A recent survey found that 64 percent of retirees thought they would move at least once during retirement. Most often, they considered moving so they could live closer to family or lower their household expenses.
The survey also found that 51 percent of retirees had chosen a smaller home during their previous move. This all suggests that in the coming years, millions of boomers will need to shed some of their possessions to fit into a smaller place. Plenty of others who aren’t currently expecting to downsize will see their plans change when they develop health or financial concerns.
Many boomers are also reaching another milestone that creates a mismatch between the mass of belongings they own compared to the space they can devote to them.
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Woman Dreads Losing Her Stuff—And Herself—On the Eve of a Life Change
Susan Moore was having a uniquely upsetting week the first time we spoke.
A 28-foot moving truck, packed as tightly as Susan and her husband could fill it, had just pulled away from their home near San Francisco. They were in the process of loading yet another huge truck with their possessions. Soon Susan was going to hop into her car and drive 11 hours away to her new home near Phoenix.
“This is probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do,” Susan told me. She had lived for 31 years in the same house, where she and her husband, Rich, raised two kids. She worked as a special education teaching assistant in the elementary school she’d attended as a child. Her parents lived three blocks away. She was “cemented and rooted” in the area, she said.
But then her family started leaving. First, her son met a local girl while attending the University of Arizona. They got married and had kids. Susan’s parents visited the sunny state and soon moved there, too.
So Susan and Rich decided to follow them. Their grandkids were growing up far away, and the housing market was great for sellers but might not stay that way. “So we started working on our house, got it in tip-top shape, then listed it and sold it in 6 days,” she said.
With plenty of storage space, Susan had little need over the decades to downsize her possessions. In fact, before her parents moved, “I kept going back there and getting stuff. I have my mother’s whole china set, a piece of furniture, and a couple of snow globes from her collection. I ended up with a carload, which went into the nice big shed in our backyard.”
Her best friend, Nancy, who’s been following my decluttering advice for years (you’ll meet her on here), tried to talk Susan into letting go of things she didn’t need. Her advice felt “brutal,” Susan said.
“If it looks good, then I want to keep it. I think it’s because I remember how special these things were to me before. Even if I don’t use them now, I don’t want to toss them. I feel like if I throw them away, I’m throwing away a piece of me. Everyone tells me, ‘You’re going on to a new chapter, so why would you want this junky stuff?’ But it’s not junky stuff to me,” she