Monthly Archives: August 2019

Female Susceptibility to Clutter

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

For me, this time of year always brings back fond memories of going to (or back to) college. That first year, I think I brought everything but the kitchen sink with me: clothes, books, plants, sewing machine, stereo with large speakers, bedding…you name it. Then once I got settled in, I bought more items to personalize my half of one small and very overcrowded dorm room.

After a few semesters, I became part of the crew that helped students move in every August, and I learned what the rest of the crew already knew: the girls brought far more stuff than the guys. Most of the guys didn’t even need help getting their belongings into the elevator and up to their room. But the girls….a few arrived in two cars because one car could not hold all of their belongings. I was fortunate that my father owned a large van, so I brought everything I wanted with room to spare.

I’m old enough (and have raised enough children) to know that no matter what society says, women and men are wired differently. My girls always liked their bedrooms well-decorated in their taste so they’d be comfortable. Meanwhile, my boys were comfortable as long as there was a bed to flop on.

Women tend to put more importance on feathering their nests than men do, and this brings with it the danger of having too many things and being unable to find places for it all. This was true of me for most of my life. Even after what we went through during our downsizing, I still have to police myself to make sure I don’t start keeping too much again. I’ve been learning how wonderful simplicity can be, and how nice something lovely looks when it’s not crowded by lots of other things that aren’t nearly as lovely.

So instead of covering every inch of available wall space with posters and mementos as I did in my first dorm room, I now have a large beautiful quilt and two small framed items on the wall of my sewing room. Photos of potential future projects are found in my files and on my Pinterest page instead of being crowded onto a bulletin board on another wall.

I suspect the female propensity for feathering the nest explains why most “decluttering experts” are women. We understand that need we have for creating a comfortable and inviting environment, and how easily it can get out of control, and why.

Rental Cars and the Downsized Life

By Claire Posted in Debt-Free, downsizing, Personal, Simpler Living Tagged , , ,

Since we downsized our lives over ten years ago, we look at our belongings in a different way than we once did. Now, keeping things simple and keeping expenses down have become the determining factors in what we own and what we do.

Case in point: by moving to a small city, we don’t have to drive far for anything, yet we have most everything we need here so we can go a month or more without leaving town. Add in the fact that we both work from home, and the result is that we put very few miles on our cars. So we haven’t had to replace them; they are now getting a little long in the tooth, being 12 and 16 years old, with 85,000 and 130,000 miles on them, respectively.

Recently, the air conditioning began to go on the “newer” car, and the repairman says it’ll cost about $800 to fix it. Since the a/c still works well on the older car, I’ve been driving it around town lately. But when we’ve taken some longer trips this summer, we decided we’d rather drive something newer and cooler (literally) than our “newer” car. So we rented vehicles instead. (The car rental office is a mile from our home, so it’s quite easy for us to pick up and drop off rental vehicles.)

It will take several rentals to equal $800. A 2019 minivan with 6,000 miles on it cost us $210 for a week-long rental in June. A 2019 SUV with 17,000 miles on it cost us $130 for a three-day weekend in August. So we can enjoy a longer trip with a newer vehicle for a reasonable price and without adding miles to our own vehicles.

If we drove new cars all year long, our car insurance bill would be quite a bit larger than the $500+ we now pay for one year of driving two old cars. But it doesn’t matter how much you pay for car insurance as long as you have it when you go to rent a new car. So we enjoy a low car insurance rate all year, and new cars when we travel.

I should point out that those affordable car rental rates are due to our Costco membership. We get quite a discount on car rental rates by going through them. See https://www.costcotravel.com/Rental-Cars for more details.

How to Find Your ACL (Acceptable Clutter Level)

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

One decluttering expert believes your rooms should be empty of everything except things you use on a daily basis; another thinks you should only keep the items that make you happy. Who’s right? No one.

The fact is that we’re all different. One person’s decluttered home is another person’s nightmare, feeling either too empty or still too full. So how do you determine what is an Acceptable Clutter Level (ACL) for you?

The easiest way is to take a favorite room of your house, perhaps your living room or den, and strip it down to the bare essentials: a place to sit, a light source and one entertainment item, like a television, laptop or Bluetooth speaker. Remove all artwork from the walls. Then spend time in that room and see how you feel. Spend more than an hour; spend a few evenings. Soon you’ll know what more is needed in that room, if anything, to make you comfortable.

Years ago, we rented a cottage for a family vacation. The cottage had a small living area which was filled with a kitchen table and chairs; no sofa. We nearly went crazy that week trying to live without a sofa. We’d sit on the chairs, we’d sit on the beds, we’d sit on the floor….nothing felt right. Our kids did just fine without a sofa, but we were suffering. That’s when we learned we had to have a sofa to be comfortable.

If you go to realtor.com, you’ll find that many people who have put their homes on the market these days have stripped them of most personal effects in an effort to make their homes look cleaner and larger, and to allow potential buyers to picture themselves living in them. This makes sense when you want to sell, but for some people, it will make sense for their current home. They’ll enjoy that uncluttered look on a daily basis.

Others need to have many personal items around them to be comfortable. You may be one of them. In that case, you’ll want to start with a stripped room and then begin adding items to the room that make the room feel more comfy without feeling too cluttered. Add a few things and then live with the room that way for a day or two; you’ll soon know whether you need more stuff (or less) in that room.

Two Rooms, No Stress

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

I have a dear friend who lives in a very large house with her husband. They have four bedrooms, three baths, a living room and a family room, a kitchen, eating area and dining room, a basement…..and a screened gazebo in the backyard for outdoor living. It’s a lovely place, and it’s filled with all sorts of unique and interesting items, some from their extensive international travels.

Over the past year, they both suffered serious health problems. Fortunately they’re recovering. But they decided against any international vacations this year, and instead just spent a week in a lake cottage in the next state.

I can’t get over how much they loved that one-bedroom cottage. They raved about its great room, its screened porch and its proximity to the beach. They loved the outdoor shower that let them rinse off the sand after a day in the waves. My friend says they ate simple meals each day for breakfast and lunch, went out to dinner each evening, and went for a few scenic drives. Otherwise, they just relaxed.

Now they’re back home. I haven’t talked to my friend since the day after their return, but I just have this feeling that a week of the simple life made their large and very full house seem a bit overwhelming to them when they got back.

The fact is that you can live in a place for years without realizing that it’s far more house than you need. At least not until you get a taste of the simple life, and then you may find that a simpler life is usually a better one.

I’ll be interested to see if my friend brings this up sometime soon.