A little less than a year ago, we sold our house and most of our “stuff.” We went from 2600 square feet of stuff to 100 square feet of stuff that’s now packed into a storage unit where we used to live.
I didn’t need a book or an eight-week online class to show me how to let go of my stuff. I just did it. Friends ask me how it felt to get rid of everything, and my answer is, “Great. I feel about 2500 pounds lighter.”
We had made a decision to radically reinvent and downsize our lives. We’d be moving 360 miles away to help care for my elderly mother, who already has a house full—I mean really full—of stuff. There was no room or reason to take all of ours there. So we let it go through Offer Up, Craigslist, Facebook, word of mouth and two giant yard sales that sucked every last drop of energy out of our bodies. I never want to do it again.
Here’s what I learned by getting rid of most of our possessions:
No one wants your stuff. If they do, they’ll want it for a whole lot less than you think it’s worth.
I thought our mission oak dining room and server that was so well made was a steal at $400 and “worth” much more. But it was crickets at that price. It finally went...for $200. I wish I could buy back the life energy I wasted ruminating over the right selling price, but I can’t.
Stuff requires work: placing, dusting, cleaning, moving, packing, storing, changing, matching, dusting again and again and again. Not a single one of these verbs turns me on. They never did. Now I’m just honest enough with myself to say it out loud.
Stuff causes anxiety. The older I got and the less I became able to handle a molten, moving pile of stress, the more my stuff got on my last nerve. I started taking things off the kitchen counters before “decluttering” was a thing and a business opportunity. Opening my hall closet made me want to throw up. I was always going to “get to it” on a weekend. But I never did, until I had to. Most of the stuff in that closet went to the curb. What the heck was I holding onto?
When you’re dead, no one will say, “Wow, she had some really nice pottery.” I don’t need to say anything about this one. You get it.
Don’t agonize over letting go of stuff. Just do the best that you can to get rid of it or keep it. If the thought of parting with something hurts too badly, keep it. If it turns out to be important, you’ll know it. If not, you’ll let it go later. It’s not worth the energy drain right now.
You can live with two knives and two towels. We probably owned 30 bath towels and 50+ knives. Don’t ask me how two people ended up with that many towels and knives. When we moved, we only brought two bath towels, largely because we didn’t give it much thought. We had two knives—a steak knife and a filet knife—in a plastic container that got thrown in our truck. We found ourselves using those two knives for three months before we moved in with Mom, and we didn’t miss the other 48 we used to have. Those two knives took care of everything we needed. I’ll admit, that’s probably a little too austere, but we learned from it. Oh, and we recently bought two more towels because they made it through the screening process I’ll describe next.
Before you buy anything, ask yourself these three questions:
Is this worth dusting? I had the STTJ arthritis in my right (dominant) hand surgically repaired three years ago. I need the same surgery in my left hand, but I don’t want to go through it again. Dusting is now at the bottom of the list of things for which I want to use my hands. If something is going to need dusting, I don’t buy it.
Where will I put this? So often we buy on impulse, not thinking about where that purchase is going to live. Now that we deliberately live in a very small space, we have to ask ourselves this question, and it helps. If there is no room for the item, I don’t buy it.
Why am I buying this? We’ve all done “emotional buying.” You have a long week at work and order some stuff from Amazon because it makes you feel better. I really examine the “why” of buying now. For example, I recently had myself convinced I wanted a hammock. I even picked out a spot for it in the backyard. As I was looking online, I asked myself why I wanted a big, bulky thing like a hammock. The answer was I wanted it to relax. How would a hammock help me to relax any more than my meditation space on the porch or my birding chairs from Ollie’s? Would this hammock be any different than the one we didn’t use 18 years ago? Once I answered those questions, I decided no on the hammock.
I don’t have this all figured out, believe me. We still have that 100 square feet of stuff in that storage unit two states away. Most of it is the stuff with high sentimental value. I’ll talk about that in part two of Unstuffing My Life next week. I hope to see you here again in a few days.
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