room by room, packing what I thought I couldn’t live without and things with special meaning. I took pictures of things that I thought would be memories for my kids, but did not want to hold on to or store any longer.
I don’t have a garage here, so we rented a storage unit. We now realize that there is nothing in there that justifies keeping it. Our goal is to sell or donate the contents. Thank you, Peter, for the encouragement over the years to bring us to this point.
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Members of the military and their families. Military families normally move every 2 to 3 years. These relocations give them a regular need to decide which items to keep and which items to let go. (“Hey, I found stuff still boxed up from our last duty station!”)
People who are heading to a home that’s not smaller. Plenty of people who are moving, even retirees, have their sights set on a bigger home. Even if you aren’t downsizing in terms of your home size, reducing the pile of stuff that goes into that home is a smart approach to take.
As you can see, the events that lead you to downsize are challenging for many reasons, not just the fact that you have to move your belongings! They often involve life-rattling changes that may only occur a few times (or, in the case of your parents’ death, just once). These developments can leave you elated, exhausted, distracted, lonely, or grief-stricken.
This isn’t the best state of mind for making important decisions. But there you are, having to make those decisions anyway. For many people, having to confront sorting their possessions under this emotional pressure is a uniquely stressful challenge.
That’s because during the process of downsizing, several truths become obvious, sometimes painfully so:
You own more than you really want or need—probably a lot more.
Looking at your old possessions reminds you that a significant portion of your life has passed.
Someday in the future, you’ll make a move that allows you to take very little stuff, such as to a long-term care facility or, eventually, a cemetery. Downsizing reminds you that life eventually shrinks for most people. For everyone, it someday ends.
When you die, leaving all your stuff behind, no one else will care about it like you do.
STOPPING THE CONVOY FOR AN INSPECTION
After interviewing and surveying hundreds of older Americans, David J. Ekerdt, PhD, knows what people think about when they think about downsizing. He’s the director of the University of Kansas Gerontology Center and the main researcher behind the Household Moves Project. Dr. Ekerdt is deeply involved in research that examines how people downsize, especially later in life.
He calls the massive pile of stuff that you collect and carry along your winding journey your material convoy. Picture a few moving trucks’ worth of supplies that travel along with you. When you’re cruising along in a spacious house with a three-car garage and shed, maybe you don’t pay much attention to your convoy. But when you need to make a sudden swerve or steer your life into a smaller neighborhood, you become very aware of this load.
Some of our possessions are necessary to help us perform as “workers, partners, parents, property owners, and cultural participants,” Dr. Ekerdt wrote. You buy clothes and replace them as you get older, and your body gets larger, smaller, or swings back and forth. You have kids and start buying stuff for their material convoys. You take up a new hobby, then replace it with a newer one. You receive gifts for the ongoing cycle of holidays, birthdays, wedding anniversaries, and work anniversaries.
The society around you may pressure you to buy certain items, he said in a phone conversation. “There was this idea of femininity in decades gone by—women surrounded themselves with fine things for entertaining, like glassware, silver, crystal, and china.” If they wanted to fit in, they bought this stuff. I guarantee that you feel some of this pressure, too, even if it doesn’t lead to your buying a gourmet panini press.
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Real-World Downsizing Discovery
Patricia says: We were moving to a new city, and construction on our new house was delayed (and delayed yet again). We lived for 8 weeks in a tiny hotel suite. We only bought 2 days’ worth of food at a time, and we only used the four plates, cutlery pieces, and glasses that were provided.
I soon began to question some of my possessions. Did I really need a “good” set of