Author Archives: Claire

About Claire

I’m a writer, declutterer, and lover of fabric, furniture and books (oh, and my laptop!) I especially like to write about decluttering and debt-free living.

The Joy (and Danger) of Estate Sales

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

Once we got rid of more than half of our belongings when we downsized, I figured going to estate sales would now be out of the question for me. Otherwise, how would I handle the temptation of more stuff?

I’ve been going to estate sales for years. I used to live down the road from a very wealthy town where people lived in beautiful old houses on acreage. Those were truly estates! By going to the estate sales, I could go inside these lovely old houses, appreciate their architecture and decorating, and sometimes pick up a few goodies as well.

Now that I’m committed to not bringing home more stuff unless I get rid of an equal amount simultaneously (so that I never overstuff a home with clutter again), I’ve been surprised to discover that going to an estate sale can actually encourage me to stick to my guns.

How can this be? Well, now when I go into a house where an estate sale is taking place (as I did the other day), and I see table after table covered with old glassware and plates, countless knick-knacks, faded costume jewelry and worn linens, I think with gratitude that I’m glad this mess isn’t mine, and that I don’t have to deal with it. It’s a good reminder of the quantity of stuff we went through when we downsized, and how happy I am to have that behind me.

Of course, my stuff was newer than most of what I see in estate sales. But it’s the sheer quantity of stuff spread all over someone’s home that is a good visual reminder of how much stuff a house can hold if you don’t stay on top of things.

So going to estate sales actually helps me keep on top of my own clutter. But there are other benefits as well. Since I no longer live near that wealthy area, the houses I go into now aren’t palatial or architecturally significant. But their contents often include things I remember from my childhood, so it’s almost like going into a museum of my youth.

For instance, at the sale I went to the other day, I saw an ashtray with a gold-colored metal top and a red-plaid bean-bag bottom, just like one I remember from my grandpa’s house. Seeing it took me back to Sunday afternoons visiting my grandparents, where the women chatted in the kitchen while Grandpa and my uncles sat around the tiny black-and-white television set, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes as they cheered on the Sox. All those important people in my life have been gone for years, but what a nice memory of them that ashtray brought back to me.

That’s why, as long as I can keep to my pledge not to bring home anything unless I get rid of something else, I will keep going to estate sales.

Channeling My Inner 12-Year-Old

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

Thanks to a years-long economic downturn, many of us have lost our livelihoods and must pare down our belongings and find a more affordable way of life.

It’s called downsizing your life, and it’s not easy. For me, one of the most challenging aspects was figuring out who I was and what I was going to need in my new downsized life.

It had been so long since I was free to do what I wanted, yet I couldn’t do anything expensive. I wouldn’t be able to afford to take up skiing in Aspen. I couldn’t become one of those people who go on three cruises a year. And I certainly wasn’t going to be able to open up a cute little gift shop in a tourist town; who’s got the money for that kind of overhead?

That said, those of us who tend to be frugal have always known that you don’t need much money to have fun. That belief is what finally helped me discover which few items of my oversized lifetime accumulation of stuff should be kept, and which needed to go.

In the end, what I figured out was that I still love to do the things I loved to do when I was 12. And since I, like most 12-year-olds back then, had very little money, the things I enjoyed cost little or nothing.

Why 12? For me, by age 12 I already knew my own mind but had not yet been distracted by boys (age 14+), the pressure to get good grades (ages 14-21), career success (age 21 +) and motherhood (age 25 +).

At 12, I read voraciously, often to escape the boredom of the classroom. I read books from the public library, so there was no money involved.

At 12, I learned to sew. Whenever I visited the small Southern town where my grandma lived, I stopped by the local fabric shop and picked up a bag of remnants for 25 cents. This kept my little sisters in doll clothes and me in sewing projects. Cheap fun!

At 12, I loved music. My little black transistor radio brought me great joy, as did my record player and a growing collection of record albums.

At 12, I loved to ride my bike all over town. It provided an escape from my family and the most freedom I would know until I learned to drive a few years later.

At 12, I had a garden. I grew bachelor buttons and potatoes and green beans. I still remember the taste of hot buttered potatoes fresh from the garden….mmmm!

Once I rediscovered these joys at the age of 50+, it became much easier to decide what to keep. I kept my very favorite books, my long-forgotten sewing supplies and our gardening tools. And I bought a nice high-quality Trek bicycle.

Everything else had to go, including the rest of the books. (We had accumulated hundreds over the years). Now I live with only my most favorite items, and they’re being used all the time.

Thanks to technology, many of my favorite things take up little space and cost little if anything. Books that aren’t in our public library can be stored on my Kindle. Going to YouTube lets me hear entire albums. Pandora offers a great variety of music whenever I want it.

So now I can enjoy my favorite activities with low clutter and at little or no cost; I call that the joy of downsizing!

If you’re overwhelmed by years of accumulated stuff and need to downsize your life, take some time to go back to your youth. What did you like when you were 12? How did you spend your time outside of the classroom? What did you enjoy doing before you were distracted by adult responsibilities? I’ll bet you’ll find some clues there.

 

What Should You Keep? Well, Who Are You Now?

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

Like so many of our contemporaries, we were forced to downsize because of a big financial reversal: my husband’s industry shifted overseas, and he was left without a livelihood, not to mention his vocation of over 30 years.

At the same time, I was facing an empty nest. Even though I’ve been a writer for years, my primary occupation was full-time mom of a large family. By the time we downsized, some of our kids had already moved out, and the others were approaching that age.

So both my husband and I were faced with the thought, “Who am I now?” Aside from the philosophical side of that question was the very real issue of which of our things should we get rid of and which of our things should we keep because we might need/want them in the future. When you no longer know who you are, everything looks like something you might need down the road.

This partially explains why we didn’t get rid of hardly anything before we moved (the first of three moves in four years), and why we kept two storage units full of stuff before we finally settled in the little house we now call home.

I don’t recommend doing what we did. It was a big pain, as you can imagine. But we just didn’t know where we would end up or what we would be doing.

It took quite a bit of time before either of us began getting an idea of what we wanted to keep and what we could give up. Speaking only for myself, I found that as time passed and I stopped seeing myself primarily as Mom, I began to see myself as Claire again. Part of that process involved tapping into my desires regarding what I wanted to do.

I’m not talking about careers here. I can’t write 16 hours a day anyways. I’m talking about how I wanted to spend my free time. It had been so many years since I had the luxury of choosing how to spend my time that I was almost paralyzed by the freedom for a while. And even when I did do something I wanted to do, I felt guilty about spending time on myself like that.

But I’m getting over it 🙂 Since then, I’ve identified some areas of interest, things that I really enjoy doing, and as a result I was able to keep items I would need and pass along items that I no longer needed.

This may sound obvious, but when you’re faced with literally hundreds of cubic feet of stuff accumulated over a busy three or four decades, you either have to pitch it all at once or come up with a way to separate the wheat from the chaff. Sentimental and frugal people like me can’t just toss it all in dumpsters, no matter how much we wish we could. We need some guidelines in order to begin the sorting routine.

Once I figured out what I wanted to do, I had my guidelines. Next time, I’ll share how that process happened for me.

 

What to Do About Your Parents’ Stuff

By Claire Posted in Clutter, downsizing, My Books, Retirement Tagged , , ,

Many people in their 40s, 50s and 60s must add to their busy lives the job of going through their parents’ belongings. Whether their folks are moving to a nursing home or assisted living, or they have passed away, it’s their adult children who have to deal with what can sometimes be an enormous amount of furniture, household items, clothes and clutter. It can be overwhelming.

If you find yourself in this situation, and you believe the old adage that “Misery loves company,” check out this article and the follow-up piece to it and learn what others are doing to tackle this huge and emotional task. You might also want to read my book, How to Clean Out Your Parent’s House (Without Filling Up Your Own).