Category Archives: Personal

Life on the Road? Not for Me

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

I’m still fascinated by women who are spending their retirement years hitting the road in a van or RV, or living in a tiny house with only the minimum of necessities. But I could never be one of them.

Why? I have too many interests. One of them is cooking and baking. I’ve been unable to break the habit of preparing large quantities of food after many years of feeding a large family. But I’ve found that cooking or baking in quantity lets me freeze things so I don’t have to cook or bake as often. However, it requires every bit of the small counter space I have to use my giant mixing bowl, my 11” X 15” baking pan, or my big crockpot; if I’m using two of those three, I could never live with less counter space than I have now. I couldn’t do what I do in a tiny home, much less an RV. No way!

I also love to sew and quilt. I have two sewing areas; the upstairs room is for sewing and serging, and for piecing quilts. The basement, with two large tables pushed together, is where I quilt my quilts, and also cut out clothes. How would I do that in an RV or tiny house? Not happening. There are some women who vacation in their RVs and also sew in them, but they prepare their projects ahead of time at home and just bring the cut pieces, a small iron and a sewing machine along. Waiting back home are their large stashes of fabric along with the areas where they cut everything out ahead of time.

Just about the only interest I have that would work with life on the road is reading. I can imagine filling my tablet with eBooks, which would hardly take up any space. But I’d get bored reading all day. I like a variety of activities each day, not just one.

Could you spend your life on the road, or in a tiny house? If you’ve wondered about it, check out YouTube for some fascinating stories of people who do just that.

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.

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!

Can You Predict Declutterism?

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

(I don’t know if declutterism is a word, but I just decided it should be one.)

I’m thinking about my kids and whether I could have predicted which ones would or wouldn’t become declutterers.

The messiest one is now into minimalism; go figure. The neatest one (well, let’s say the most organized) is still fairly neat. Another messy one has quite a bit of stuff in their house, but all of it is much loved and was curated to go together, so that it’s actually quite an interesting house and not messy at all. Then there is the one who is emotionally attached to everything and it must not be moved around.

They are fairly true to the way they were in childhood except for the one who’s into minimalism. That one has several small children and I think the minimalism is a reaction to the kiddie chaos. After all, it’s important to feel you have something under control when you live in chaos.

As I’ve mentioned in a few of my books, I was not a messy kid but I was very emotionally attached to my many beloved dolls, books, records, craft supplies, etc. I used all of my things and some showed the wear (I prefer to think of those items as looking well-loved.) I am certainly not a minimalist and was forced into declutterism out of necessity. I never would have predicted that I would someday live with a minimum of stuff. But then I didn’t know I was going to end up in a small house. (That life event was precipitated by another life event as explained in my latest book, Memoirs of a Downsized Declutterer.)

Do your childhood clutter habits show up in how you live today, or have you changed completely?