Tag Archives: Clutter

A High Price for Decluttering

By Claire Posted in Clutter Tagged , ,

A friend told me the story of someone she knows who decided to move out of his condo and to another country. His condo sold as soon as it hit the market, which he was not expecting. So now he had to get rid of everything quickly. He pulled out the items that would go into climate-controlled storage. But that’s not inexpensive, so he had to be very selective. That left an awful lot of stuff in his condo, and not enough time to hire someone to do a living estate sale.

So he called one of those junk dealers you hear advertised on the radio. True to their ads, they came over right away and cleaned that condo out completely, so that he was already on his way out of the country when his condo sale closed and the new owner moved into a completely empty condo.

A happy ending? It depends on your perspective. The company that took out all his “junk” charged him $3500. That’s right, $3500. Clutter can be very expensive!

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.

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.