Category Archives: Simpler Living

An Eavesdropped Story

By Claire Posted in Clutter, downsizing, My Books, Personal, Retirement, Simpler Living Tagged , , ,

Overheard while looking at cards in the store the other day:

Couple in their 80s: How are you? I haven’t seen you in ages!

Woman around 70: I’m fine. I’m moving in two weeks. Have you heard?

Couple in their 80s: No. Where are you moving to?

Woman around 70: Oh, we’re staying in town but we’re downsizing to a much smaller place. I think we’ll be really happy once this is over and we’re settled in.

Couple in their 80s: I’m sure you will be. I’ve heard it’s a lot of work, going through everything.

Woman around 70: Oh yes. So much stuff from 40 years. But it had to go, and we’re even down to just one car and one truck. Our son finally took his motorcycles!

Couple in their 80s: We’ve had friends who downsized and they’re very happy they did.

Woman around 70: I’m already feeling better without all that stuff around me. I can’t wait to get into our new place.

Couple in their 80s: Who did you hire to move everything?

And the conversation went on in that vein, while I kept looking at cards. Then my antenna went back up when I heard the wife in the elderly couple say:

“You’re so wise to downsize. We’re thinking about doing it someday.”

Right. They’re already in their 80s. I’m thinking that line really means “We’ll let our kids worry about it after we’re gone.”

That’s not a very nice thing to do to their kids, who are clearly gonna need How to Clean Out Your Parent’s House (Without Filling Up Your Own).

The Christmas Gift Dilemma

By Claire Posted in Clutter, Personal, Simpler Living Tagged , , , ,

It’s that time of year again: decision-making time regarding Christmas gifts. When I was a child, opening gifts was high excitement. I want to recreate that for my grandkids.

But there are a few problems with this idea. Their folks aren’t looking for lots of new toys to trip over. One of my kids is a minimalist; two are moving next year. So they don’t want us to give their kids lots of stuff.

I understand, and if our grandkids were older, I’d have no problem giving them gift cards. But I really enjoy watching the littles open their gifts, and seeing how excited they get. I know from experience that there are only so many years that they show that excitement. Before long they reach the teen years, when you can’t even get them out of bed on Christmas morning.

So I’m torn. To complicate things, many popular toys are in short supply this year. Apparently an awful lot of them are sitting in shipping containers in the waters just west of California. I don’t want to buy my grandkids just any old thing so they can open something. I want it to be something they will love. I don’t want to clutter up my kids’ homes, but it’s more important to me to make my grandkids happy.

I suspect I’m not the only person grappling with this dilemma.

A Decluttering Fish Tale

By Claire Posted in Clutter, downsizing, Personal, Simpler Living Tagged , ,

I think this article is supposed to be non-fiction, but I found an awful lot of fiction in it.

The author has to move in two weeks but once she hired a woman to help her, they decluttered her whole house in a day, and still had time for tea?

She kept entire boxes of things to go through after her move, even though she was moving in with her mother?

Did I mention she was moving out of a five-bedroom home where she lived with her four children whose stuff also had to be gone through?

Yep, my BS detector went rat-a-tat-tat after I read that article. As I’ve described here and in my latest book, Memoirs of a Downsized Declutterer, we spent months moving things out of our five-bedroom house, and two weeks frantically packing up the rest once we finally had a buyer. It took us two more years to go through everything we had stored in two storage units and one rental house after we left our home of nearly 20 years. So you understand why I might be a wee bit skeptical about her story.

If you find yourself in the same boat, moving on a deadline with way too much clutter to deal with, go easy on yourself. Find one or more places to store your excess possessions until you can go through them mindfully. And know that it’s not possible to do it all in one day. (But I hope you don’t take as long to do it as we did!)

A New Trend: Cautious Decluttering

By Claire Posted in Clutter, Personal, Simpler Living, Small-House Living Tagged , , ,

I used to recommend getting rid of anything you don’t need or want. If it’s something you don’t want, get rid of it right away and then take your time replacing it until you find what you love.

But that was then.

Now that the supply lines are clogged up, who knows how long your wait will be. You might want to hang on to your old item, hated though it might be, until you can replace it.

Here in the U.S., we’ve been used to finding things easily, because there were always lots of sources for new goods. But now, new isn’t always easily obtainable. For instance:

  • On our furniture search, we learned that many furniture factories are running at a six-month lag, and in the case of La-Z-Boy furniture, up to a year.
  • A young couple we know of decided to buy a new camper. They just learned there’s an eight-month wait for the specific model they want.
  • An older couple we know signed the papers for their new house last February. It was supposed to be ready in August. That date has been changed to December, maybe.

Part of the joy of decluttering is getting rid of things right away and seeing the empty space that results, space you may or may not intend to refill. Now that decision is being taken away from you. If you get rid of something you need, like a sofa or a kitchen table, you may have to go without one for a while.