Category Archives: Clutter

How to Avoid Becoming an Involuntary Van Dweller

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

Last time I mentioned imagining that you’re one of the many women following the trend of living in a van and making it their own little home as a way to become motivated to declutter. That exercise is also useful even if you don’t think you’ll ever have to downsize, because you never know what kind of curve ball life might throw at you down the road.

Many women will reach retirement age with very little in terms of support, but they don’t realize it now. Unless they’ve had a great job with wonderful benefits and managed to save up a sizeable retirement account (and/or will receive an impressive pension), they may find themselves on a very tight budget if their husband dies first (statistically likely).

Many women have been disappointed to learn that because their husband didn’t earn an above-average wage, they’re only receiving a small monthly stipend from Social Security, not enough to live on unless they’re debt-free and live very frugally.

One of my friends lost her husband to cancer when they were in their mid-50s. She had been a stay-at-home mom and still had one teenage child at home. She was shocked to learn that she couldn’t even get widow’s benefits from Social Security because she wasn’t 60 yet. Financial aid from one of her older kids is the only reason she’s not homeless now. Today she’s in her mid-60s and living on Social Security; her husband’s job didn’t offer a pension, and they never had any spare money to save for retirement because they spent it all raising kids.

So unless you have plenty of money waiting for you in retirement, now’s the time to reduce your expenses so that you don’t end up living in a van in your old age. Cash out everything you own that you don’t really need anymore. Find a more inexpensive place to live. If your car isn’t paid off, sell it and buy something less expensive.  Then take the money you save each month and sock it away for your retirement years. You’ll be glad you did.

Think Like a Van Dweller

By Claire Posted in Clutter, downsizing, Simpler Living Tagged

On YouTube.com, you can find many videos of women all excited to decorate their vans that they’re living in. It’s hard for me to imagine choosing such a lifestyle, but apparently it’s a trend right now.

Imagine being one of these women. You have to get rid of most of your stuff to fit into your van. Which items will you keep and which will you get rid of? Which items will be most useful to you, or will have the most entertainment value for the space they take up, like choosing your tablet to replace your bookshelves full of books, and your entertainment center full of dvd’s?

If you watch a few of these videos, you’ll see that they have to devote much of their limited space to supplies, food, and batteries. So we’re talking very little space for frivolities.

But if you’ve been having trouble decluttering, put yourself in each woman’s place and think about what you really treasure amongst your many belongings. Yes, you could rent a storage space to keep things you can’t take with you, but are you really likely to go visit your stuff regularly?

Pretending to be one of these women is a good starting point for motivating yourself to declutter.

Finally Decluttering

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

Our neighbors at the house we had to sell have just sold their house after three decades of raising a large family in it. Now their kids are all on their own and they don’t need all that space anymore.

If you’ve been reading here any length of time at all, you know I looked up their house on realtor.com and checked out all the photos. Wow, did that ever bring back memories of happy times when my kids and theirs were young, and “going next door to play” was big excitement for them.

They still have a fair amount of furniture to deal with, but that’s to be expected. It looks like they’ve already dealt with a lot of the stuff because the rooms are fairly empty.

This is going on all over the country. Baby boomers who never bothered to downsize are finally doing so, often lured by the high selling prices that have resulted from the housing bubble. If they never knew how to declutter, they’re learning it now!

One Hazard of a Small House

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

An elderly couple I know has lived in the same little house for over 50 years. They raised their kids there and it has served them very well, until now.

The problem is that there’s not a lot of room to move around in their house, and they both use walkers. So “traffic jams” are not unusual.

There is one solution: remove some of their furniture to make more room for them to get around. But they’re very attached to their belongings and don’t want to allow any changes to be made (their offspring are willing to do the heavy work).

This actually reflects a common problem that keeps people of all ages from decluttering: they hate change, so they would rather live with belongings that no longer serve them than to give them up. That’s how they end up living in cluttered houses.

In a large house this might not be such a problem (unless even the hallways are full of clutter). But in a small house, it takes very little for the halls and traffic patterns to become blocked. Only someone who is committed to keeping their home livable would be willing to get rid of possessions if that’s what it would take to keep them in their home.

I’ve thought that about my own small house. The living areas have some spare space, but the bedrooms do not. They’re pretty small. If we live here until we’re elderly, we’ll have to get rid of some furniture in order to move around safely if one or both of us end up using walkers. We have several tall bookshelves that are full of our treasured books and hobby materials. They would probably be the first to go.