Downsizing

Like most people, I have not handled downsizing well. But here’s what I’ve learned about what's involved.

I’m still dealing with the emotional sense of loss that occurred when my wife and I sold our house in Connecticut to move to an apartment in Raleigh, North Carolina. It turned out to be one of the more emotionally difficult chores I have ever endured because of what we couldn’t take with us.

I vividly recall the large green flexible trash container that sat in our driveway for several days. We were to fill it up with many smaller items – the kind of things that cram kitchen cabinets, closet shelves, and basement storage areas – that a trash hauler really couldn’t bother with.

Discarding Keepsakes

As I look back, my life resembles a debris field from a sunken ocean liner. Random items remain scattered on the ocean floor while a few are retrieved by survivors.

Without listing all the items that I’ve tossed away whenever we move, I recall always feeling that a major piece of my life has just been trashed, never to be seen again.

• Family photos – gone

• Family mementos – gone

• Years of class notebooks, lecture notes, scholarly papers – gone

• Books, hundreds of books, many annotated – gone

• Favorite furniture, including some antiques – gone

• Tools, camping gear, small appliances – gone

Keepsakes – jewelry, photos, vacation souvenirs, personal articles of clothing, letters, audio and video recordings, etc. – are how we remember loved ones by touching or viewing things they have touched and viewed.

This is why, through it all, I continue to keep a set of small dessert plates, a couple of hand-painted serving bowls, and a cut-glass pitcher. They call to mind family dinners with loved ones now long gone. Other items, too, such as remembered holiday decorations, I cannot yet bear to discard because relinquishing them would be dreadfully painful.

Sorting through keepsakes amounts to sorting through my life in the face of mortality. That’s never easy, but sooner or later it must be done.

My Parents’ Downsizing

After retiring from their teaching careers, my parents moved to Florida for a few years. When they sold their house in Indiana, they were able to take most of their personal possessions to their new home. My mother insisted on purchasing new furniture, but clothing, photos, and keepsakes made the trip south.

In 1991, however, poor health forced them to move into a retirement home in Indianapolis. That compelled a major downsizing because their new apartment was small. Still, they placed many keepsakes, photos, and some furniture in temporary storage. All of that was meant for me since I then had a house in Syracuse, NY, where I could store it.

That’s how I acquired most of the things that wound up in the trash as mentioned above. Hence, the pain, despite my seldom looking at or using any of it. When I divorced and moved to Connecticut, I took all of it with me to my new home. And there it sat in my basement for 16 years.

Of course, I could have learned from my parents’ experience. But I didn’t. I never really thought about what it would mean to become older, change my lifestyle, and be forced to give up most of the possessions that had long surrounded me. Thinking about all that and planning such changes was too morbid. Better just to let the stuff sit in the basement so long as I could keep it dry.

Continual Downsizing

When we moved into our three-bedroom apartment in Raleigh, we were unable to cram all our stuff into the space available. So, we put some of it in “temporary” storage. We weren’t ready to part with all of it. I also knew that sending it to my daughter would have been an imposition.

After only seven months, noisy overhead neighbors forced us to move yet again. Since we both worked from home, we sought a place that would be quiet and let us get some sleep. We found a townhouse across town, but that required us to pack up and move again. And that provided an occasion to shed more stuff.

Is that the end? Hardly. We are now sorting through our remaining possessions to get rid of everything that we can. We have finally decided to try living a much simpler life in what will surely be a smaller space. There is simply no way that we can keep all our clothes and other possessions through another downsizing. It’s time to focus on what is essential.

What We’re Learning

Thankfully, my wife can reach necessary conclusions more quickly than I can. I’m the slow learner (perhaps because years in academia conditioned me to be plodding). Gradually, I’m now getting my mind around two important truths.

First, I can be content with much less stuff than I now have. Even after two moves within the past four years, I still have closets and dressers stuffed with clothes that I almost never wear. Why?

We still have several pictures and diplomas that we haven’t displayed since moving. Why?

We keep dishes, glassware, and tableware that we never use. Why?

We’re both beginning to look at many of our possessions as unnecessarily constraining. Whenever we manage to get rid of something that isn’t so sentimental, I experience a small sense of liberation.

Second, we have concluded that hoarding stuff is to succumb to the capitalist trap. Remember when, following the attacks of 9/11/2021, President George W. Bush urged everyone to keep shopping? It was our civic duty to keep the economy healthy. We also remember how that turned out by 2008.

Now, we’ve mostly stopped buying more stuff for our home and ourselves, unless it is to replace something essential. We no longer spend weekends shopping. We’re more interested in sharing experiences together.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we had changed our lifestyle to avoid shopping and going to public venues. We’re reapplying that lesson now. Walks in the woods were physically and emotionally healthy in 2020. They still are.

Of course, all this downsizing is what many of us older folks go through out of necessity. That probably won’t change.

But I suggest that the economic and political travail that we currently face with our fellow citizens provides an opportunity to escape the capitalist trap. Acquiring and hoarding more stuff will not make us happy. And continually purchasing ever more costly stuff will become more difficult.

So, do yourself a favor: turn the buying boycotts of today as much as possible into a more liberated, less capitalistic lifestyle. In the end (literally), you and your loved ones will be glad you did.

In closing, George Carlin, one of my favorite philosophers, made a similar point about hoarding stuff. Take a look.

And please share your own downsizing stories in the comments.