Downsizing Sets You Free......

[Suckrates]

Like many members here, and people all over the world, during your life you accumulate "Stuff"....

Its an almost unconscious act, and it creeps up on you, and then one day you look around and ask yourself

"where did all this shit come from" ??? And you realize that you have somehow Collected it....

Now nearing 63, I am kinda preoccupied with Death: well actually NOT Death so much as the aftermath of Death. WHO will deal with ALL my "stuff" and what will become of it ??? And while I really have noone to delegate the daunting task of disposing of all my "stuff", I have taken it upon myself to prepare for the end, and Downsize....

At the beginning of my journey, it was difficult, I would put the stuff into piles, the "keep" pile and the "discard" pile, and it always ended up with the keep pile being so much bigger... Maybe ill NEED it, maybe someone else could use it, what if ???? blah, blah, and in the end I accomplished nothing because I was thinking TOO MUCH..

Now I've discovered the only way to do this is to go "cold turkey", no thinking, just THROWING..... and it really works much better.....And why would I care anyway ? This "stuff" has just been sitting dormant for decades, untouched, so it should be VERY easy to just put it in a trash bag and Bye-bye......

YES it Is !!!! Yesterday, I got rid of a 600 VHS tape collection.... No Craigs list, no EBAY, just black trash bags, 15 of them..... And Boy were they HEAVY..... These tapes have been taking up an entire Armoir for YEARS, since computer porn, they havent been touched, and who really has a VCR anymore ???? I took my shopping cart and wheeled those bags to the dumpster. If any of my neighbors were watching, I am sure they reported me to the police for transporting "body parts"...... And today with a serious backache, I am looking at an empty armoir, and you know what ???? IT FEELS FUCKING FABULOUS.......

I have alot more "stuff" to tackle, but with my new found Bravado I know I can conquer this.... And I can honestly tell you, it is so FREEING. I am Euphoric........

I suppose this story can be a metaphor for your life.... Freedom is in control.... Ah, the lessons you learn as you Age.....

[Guest EXPAT]

I agree completely. I have a process where I go through my house once a month with the goal of getting rid of something from my house and I've slowly gotten rid of a lot of stuff. It is liberating. After dealing with two deaths in the family in the last couple of years and having to get rid of stuff for them, I vowed I would never put someone else through that.

[Guest callipygian]

If any of my neighbors were watching, I am sure they reported me to the police for transporting "body parts"......

Well, you were transporting body parts. Hopefully, all intact however!

It is a daunting task however, and I think your "cold turkey" method is the most effective.

[RA1]

I just spent the summer trying to rid myself of stuff in order to downsize. 26 years of accumulated stuff by one of the world's biggest pack rats and no easy way to deal with it. I sold about $6,000 worth of furniture for $100, just to make sure they really wanted it. I gave away stuff. I threw away stuff.

I agree it is liberating but I also think it is a process. First you downsize, getting rid of lots of stuff. Then you move into a retirement community and downsize some more. Finally, you move into a room and it really doesn't matter any longer. You have completed the process and the next step is the after life.

In the meantime who is NCAA football's #1? Two SEC teams are in contention, Ole Miss and Mississippi State with Florida State also in contention. Fun.

Best regards.

RA1

[Guest callipygian]

First you downsize, getting rid of lots of stuff. Then you move into a retirement community and downsize some more. Finally, you move into a room and it really doesn't matter any longer. You have completed the process and the next step is the after life.

Jeeeez, Thanks for the uplifting post!

[RA1]

Sorry to offend. Personally I am looking forward to the after life but NOT very soon.

\

Best regards,

RA1

[Guest callipygian]

Sorry to offend. Personally I am looking forward to the after life but NOT very soon.

\

Best regards,

RA1

Oh, no worries, you could not have been more correct!

[RA1]

You are only too kind.

Best regards,

RA1

[Guest callipygian]

Welcome to Shady Pines' after-life waiting room. Now that you've downsized your possessions - we're going to downsize your expectations for you as well.

This isn't a hallway - THIS IS your room.

PS: Don't miss our popular happy hour between 3:00pm and 3:01pm. Every first Monday in December immediately following a leap-year which ends in nine.

[Suckrates]

Welcome to Shady Pines' after-life waiting room. Now that you've downsized your possessions - we're going to downsize your expectations for you as well.

This isn't a hallway - THIS IS your room.

PS: Don't miss our popular happy hour between 3:00pm and 3:01pm. Every first Monday in December immediately following a leap-year which ends in nine.

BadNursingHomes.jpg

Well, my process will be quite different. I will go from my home of 63 years to here........(I like cutting out the middle-men)

And how kind of Drakerass, Lucky and Daddy (after his tummy-tuck) to show up ! The only no-show was lurkerspeaks......

[Guest callipygian]

Well, my process will be quite different. I will go from my home of 63 years to here........(I like cutting out the middle-men)

And how kind of Drakerass, Lucky and Daddy (after his tummy-tuck) to show up !

Draker uses Clairol Nice & Easy #9? I suspected, but never wanted to gossip.

[Suckrates]

Draker uses Clairol Nice & Easy #9? I suspected, but never wanted to gossip.

Oh calli, you are mistaken. Drakerass claims to be "all natural"... You must be thinking of IceWizard ???

[wayout]

It is funny how my own downsizing attempts started in the same way...with a large VHS porn collection being tossed out. I find getting rid of things fairly easy for me. I consider it part of an overall effort to simplify life, which has many aspects that are quite challenging and difficult for me. I've been at it for over a year now and it has been with mixed results but I keep plugging away.

[Suckrates]

It is funny how my own downsizing attempts started in the same way...with a large VHS porn collection being tossed out. I find getting rid of things fairly easy for me. I consider it part of an overall effort to simplify life, which has many aspects that are quite challenging and difficult for me. I've been at it for over a year now and it has been with mixed results but I keep plugging away.

YUP, I now think of it as a second job... Each nite and on weekend I go to work on my job: Downsizing.... I havent gotten to the sex toys and leather paraphenalia yet, but if I keep tossing and NOT thinking, I should be OK.... The hardest part will be my Vintage cookie jars and lady head collections. Those are things I collected with my partner now deceased, so naturally I am holding them till Last.... I'll probably just pop a few Valium beforehand. If any of you know anyone that might be interested in those things, please have them contact me....

Now I just need to surpress the urge to BUY, to fill up all this empty space I am looking at.... OY VEY !

[Guest Hoover42]

I agree completely. I have a process where I go through my house once a month with the goal of getting rid of something from my house and I've slowly gotten rid of a lot of stuff. It is liberating. After dealing with two deaths in the family in the last couple of years and having to get rid of stuff for them, I vowed I would never put someone else through that.

Same here.

Also, before or immediately after I acquire any new thing, I look for something in the house to give away or throw out.

It helps that I live only a few miles away from the county waste disposal facility

[Guest zipperzone]

I don't want to downsize. I love all my stuff and enjoy having it around me to remind me of a life well lived.

My executors can do what ever they want with it.

[ihpguy]

Just went through this with my Mom's death in February. Not fun, But necessary. The reality is that they are things that represent your memories and very few others. Few have real monetart value. And after you're gone, no one else really cares about them.

[AdamSmith]

If radical downsizing is the goal, I can highly recommend being taken to the cleaners in a divorce proceeding.

[lookin]

If radical downsizing is the goal, I can highly recommend being taken to the cleaners in a divorce proceeding.

Unhappily married for thirty-five years, hoarders

Bill and Ellen Grabowski are terrified of divorce.

[Guest CharliePS]

Now this is a subject of much more relevance to me than sex! Every time I have moved, I have tried to get rid of things that I know I have no real use for. Yet somehow many of them accompany me to my next stop. In our last move, we downsized the house by one quarter of the square feet, yet still transported boxes of stuff across the continent, and then let them sit unopened in the garage (isn't that what garages are for?) for ten years. The only things I managed to persuade my spouse to dispose of before we left were a thousand books of a 3000 book collection (books are heavy and expensive to transport) and a collection of LPs (also very heavy) going back to college days, because we had no equipment to play them on.

My spouse and I are heirs of the Great Depression, which has probably affected our attitude toward saving things that we "might" find some use for, someday. A full drawer in the dining room contains candles purchased in the 1960s for use during dinner parties, although we don't give dinner parties anymore, and if we did, we couldn't see what we were eating by candlelight. We have all the tools--sledgehammers, saws, files, wirecutters, etc.--that we purchased in 1971 to do our own gentrification of the abandoned shell of an inner city Victorian townhouse, which became our first home; all we actually need nowadays are pliers and screwdrivers. For that matter, I still have many of my long-deceased father's work tools. There are boxes of collars, leashes and toys used by pets who crossed the rainbow bridge years ago. There are cans of paint that we never threw out because they were not quite empty. Boxes of games that we don't remember how to play. Our trash collectors are having their Fall Cleaning special starting today, when we can put out anything we want without charge, but we never seem to be sufficiently prepared for it. For their Spring Cleaning at least we did put out a big propane gas grill that was in the yard when we moved in, which we had never touched and it was rusting away.

What is much easier, yet somehow harder, to get rid of is books and papers. Periodically, I go through bookshelves and try to pull out books that I feel sure we will never look at again, but then my spouse goes through them and puts most of them back. We both have books from our childhood or college days that have sentimental value to us, that would have to be put in the trash because the library or a used bookstore wouldn't want them. I tried to institute a household rule that every time we bought a new book, we had to get rid of an old one, but it has been hard to enforce. My spouse can't give up old Geodetic Survey maps or drawings he did or projects he worked on, even though they are gathering dust under beds or in closets. I have almost every personal letter I have received since college days, many from friends long dead, though I have finally become ruthless about discarding things like birthday cards which have only a signature. At least email has slowed that accumulation to a crawl. On top of those documents, I have everything that my mother saved and passed on to me, some of which is useful when doing genealogical research, like the postcard my grandfather sent from Salt Lake City to his sister in 1900, in response to her news that their father was dying back home in New York. And, of course, there are the photos, which I hate to trash even though I don't recognize the people in them. And the boxes of slides from trips we took to Guatemala, Indonesia, Japan, Poland, Singapore, France, Australia, Iceland, Saint Maarten, Nepal, etc., and other countries that no longer even exist, like the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. We haven't looked at them in years (where is the projector?). My rational side says to chuck it all, but somehow I just can't.

I have told my spouse that if he dies first, I intend to immediately throw out all the books and papers that he has hoarded, not to mention his pornography collection, which fills an entire closet (I ruthlessly got rid of mine, except for issues that have sentimental value, such as ones that contain photos of models I knew when they were still young and hot). And I have finally sent my favorite old bar-cruising outfits to the thrift store or the trash heap. But there are other things I know I will probably never be able to just dump in the trash, like the denim vest that an adorable young man left behind in my bedroom after a romp in 1966, or the two sweaters I bought with money from my first summer job, to go away to my freshman year in college, during the Eisenhower administration--they still look pretty good on me, after all.

[ihpguy]

My niece discovered that the local St. Vincent DePaul resale outlet took basically everything and gave you a slip with a more-than-reasonable valuation for tax purposes.

When Mom first went into assisted living and then from there died four months later, we had to get rid of almost everything, it took us only a few hours. The three surviving kids each took things that had special remembrances for them and the rest all went in a three van loads to St. Vincent's. Not many of the family in the following generation cares about the treasured things with a history from 2 or 3 generations previously. I treasure my Mom's hand-knitted afghans and the favorite artwork of "her lady." And I really wanted this incredible strange bottle opener. I've never seen another before or since. My brother took our grandmother's bread knife brought over from eastern Europe on the boat. My sister has the single silver-plated single used to feed us as kids and the hand-painted plate that our father's nanny gave my parents as a wedding present. That is what ended up being really important

Once it is gone, it really is forgotten. Out of sight, out of mind.

[Guest callipygian]

Now this is a subject of much more relevance to me than sex! Every time I have moved, I have tried to get rid of things that I know I have no real use for. Yet somehow many of them accompany me to my next stop. In our last move, we downsized the house by one quarter of the square feet, yet still transported boxes of stuff across the continent, and then let them sit unopened in the garage (isn't that what garages are for?) for ten years. The only things I managed to persuade my spouse to dispose of before we left were a thousand books of a 3000 book collection (books are heavy and expensive to transport) and a collection of LPs (also very heavy) going back to college days, because we had no equipment to play them on.

My spouse and I are heirs of the Great Depression, which has probably affected our attitude toward saving things that we "might" find some use for, someday. A full drawer in the dining room contains candles purchased in the 1960s for use during dinner parties, although we don't give dinner parties anymore, and if we did, we couldn't see what we were eating by candlelight. We have all the tools--sledgehammers, saws, files, wirecutters, etc.--that we purchased in 1971 to do our own gentrification of the abandoned shell of an inner city Victorian townhouse, which became our first home; all we actually need nowadays are pliers and screwdrivers. For that matter, I still have many of my long-deceased father's work tools. There are boxes of collars, leashes and toys used by pets who crossed the rainbow bridge years ago. There are cans of paint that we never threw out because they were not quite empty. Boxes of games that we don't remember how to play. Our trash collectors are having their Fall Cleaning special starting today, when we can put out anything we want without charge, but we never seem to be sufficiently prepared for it. For their Spring Cleaning at least we did put out a big propane gas grill that was in the yard when we moved in, which we had never touched and it was rusting away.

What is much easier, yet somehow harder, to get rid of is books and papers. Periodically, I go through bookshelves and try to pull out books that I feel sure we will never look at again, but then my spouse goes through them and puts most of them back. We both have books from our childhood or college days that have sentimental value to us, that would have to be put in the trash because the library or a used bookstore wouldn't want them. I tried to institute a household rule that every time we bought a new book, we had to get rid of an old one, but it has been hard to enforce. My spouse can't give up old Geodetic Survey maps or drawings he did or projects he worked on, even though they are gathering dust under beds or in closets. I have almost every personal letter I have received since college days, many from friends long dead, though I have finally become ruthless about discarding things like birthday cards which have only a signature. At least email has slowed that accumulation to a crawl. On top of those documents, I have everything that my mother saved and passed on to me, some of which is useful when doing genealogical research, like the postcard my grandfather sent from Salt Lake City to his sister in 1900, in response to her news that their father was dying back home in New York. And, of course, there are the photos, which I hate to trash even though I don't recognize the people in them. And the boxes of slides from trips we took to Guatemala, Indonesia, Japan, Poland, Singapore, France, Australia, Iceland, Saint Maarten, Nepal, etc., and other countries that no longer even exist, like the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. We haven't looked at them in years (where is the projector?). My rational side says to chuck it all, but somehow I just can't.

I have told my spouse that if he dies first, I intend to immediately throw out all the books and papers that he has hoarded, not to mention his pornography collection, which fills an entire closet (I ruthlessly got rid of mine, except for issues that have sentimental value, such as ones that contain photos of models I knew when they were still young and hot). And I have finally sent my favorite old bar-cruising outfits to the thrift store or the trash heap. But there are other things I know I will probably never be able to just dump in the trash, like the denim vest that an adorable young man left behind in my bedroom after a romp in 1966, or the two sweaters I bought with money from my first summer job, to go away to my freshman year in college, during the Eisenhower administration--they still look pretty good on me, after all.

This brought tears to my eyes. Happy tears, sad tears, tears of yesterday and tears just because what all this really says about someone is:

You've been blessed with living a full and fruitful life.

Lovely post, Charlie.

[Guest CharliePS]

My niece discovered that the local St. Vincent DePaul resale outlet took basically everything and gave you a slip with a more-than-reasonable valuation for tax purposes.

When Mom first went into assisted living and then from there died four months later, we had to get rid of almost everything, it took us only a few hours. The three surviving kids each took things that had special remembrances for them and the rest all went in a three van loads to St. Vincent's. Not many of the family in the following generation cares about the treasured things with a history from 2 or 3 generations previously. I treasure my Mom's hand-knitted afghans and the favorite artwork of "her lady." And I really wanted this incredible strange bottle opener. I've never seen another before or since. My brother took our grandmother's bread knife brought over from eastern Europe on the boat. My sister has the single silver-plated single used to feed us as kids and the hand-painted plate that our father's nanny gave my parents as a wedding present. That is what ended up being really important

Once it is gone, it really is forgotten. Out of sight, out of mind.

Your post reminded me that my mother also made afghans in her old age, when she was almost blind but her hands were still nimble, and I still use the best ones (what would I save them for now?). I still use a clever jar opener that I remember from her kitchen when I was a child, because it works better than anything I could buy at Bed Bath and Beyond. I also have the handpainted china that my grandparents were given as a wedding present. My grandfather's gold wedding ring sat untouched in a box in the back of my dresser for a half century, but when I finally got married last year, I took it to a jeweler to see if it could be sized larger to fit me, and he not only did it, he managed not to disturb the engraving inside the ring of my grandparents' initials and their wedding date 110 years ago. I would like that to be buried with me, but since I have no family to pass the other things on to, I assume the items that don't end up in a thrift shop will be trashed.

[Guest CharliePS]

Well, this thread did serve a useful purpose: we just returned from carrying two bags full of books to the library as a donation. Now, if we could just make this a weekly event....

[Suckrates]

Now this is a subject of much more relevance to me than sex! Every time I have moved, I have tried to get rid of things that I know I have no real use for. Yet somehow many of them accompany me to my next stop. In our last move, we downsized the house by one quarter of the square feet, yet still transported boxes of stuff across the continent, and then let them sit unopened in the garage (isn't that what garages are for?) for ten years. The only things I managed to persuade my spouse to dispose of before we left were a thousand books of a 3000 book collection (books are heavy and expensive to transport) and a collection of LPs (also very heavy) going back to college days, because we had no equipment to play them on.

My spouse and I are heirs of the Great Depression, which has probably affected our attitude toward saving things that we "might" find some use for, someday. A full drawer in the dining room contains candles purchased in the 1960s for use during dinner parties, although we don't give dinner parties anymore, and if we did, we couldn't see what we were eating by candlelight. We have all the tools--sledgehammers, saws, files, wirecutters, etc.--that we purchased in 1971 to do our own gentrification of the abandoned shell of an inner city Victorian townhouse, which became our first home; all we actually need nowadays are pliers and screwdrivers. For that matter, I still have many of my long-deceased father's work tools. There are boxes of collars, leashes and toys used by pets who crossed the rainbow bridge years ago. There are cans of paint that we never threw out because they were not quite empty. Boxes of games that we don't remember how to play. Our trash collectors are having their Fall Cleaning special starting today, when we can put out anything we want without charge, but we never seem to be sufficiently prepared for it. For their Spring Cleaning at least we did put out a big propane gas grill that was in the yard when we moved in, which we had never touched and it was rusting away.

What is much easier, yet somehow harder, to get rid of is books and papers. Periodically, I go through bookshelves and try to pull out books that I feel sure we will never look at again, but then my spouse goes through them and puts most of them back. We both have books from our childhood or college days that have sentimental value to us, that would have to be put in the trash because the library or a used bookstore wouldn't want them. I tried to institute a household rule that every time we bought a new book, we had to get rid of an old one, but it has been hard to enforce. My spouse can't give up old Geodetic Survey maps or drawings he did or projects he worked on, even though they are gathering dust under beds or in closets. I have almost every personal letter I have received since college days, many from friends long dead, though I have finally become ruthless about discarding things like birthday cards which have only a signature. At least email has slowed that accumulation to a crawl. On top of those documents, I have everything that my mother saved and passed on to me, some of which is useful when doing genealogical research, like the postcard my grandfather sent from Salt Lake City to his sister in 1900, in response to her news that their father was dying back home in New York. And, of course, there are the photos, which I hate to trash even though I don't recognize the people in them. And the boxes of slides from trips we took to Guatemala, Indonesia, Japan, Poland, Singapore, France, Australia, Iceland, Saint Maarten, Nepal, etc., and other countries that no longer even exist, like the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. We haven't looked at them in years (where is the projector?). My rational side says to chuck it all, but somehow I just can't.

I have told my spouse that if he dies first, I intend to immediately throw out all the books and papers that he has hoarded, not to mention his pornography collection, which fills an entire closet (I ruthlessly got rid of mine, except for issues that have sentimental value, such as ones that contain photos of models I knew when they were still young and hot). And I have finally sent my favorite old bar-cruising outfits to the thrift store or the trash heap. But there are other things I know I will probably never be able to just dump in the trash, like the denim vest that an adorable young man left behind in my bedroom after a romp in 1966, or the two sweaters I bought with money from my first summer job, to go away to my freshman year in college, during the Eisenhower administration--they still look pretty good on me, after all.

Charlie, we are very much kindred spirits, but let me share what I have learned. Memories are things that exist in your mind, NOT in boxes.... and if you have all your memories in boxes, but dont look at the boxes, what becomes of the memories ? Bite the bullet, chuck the shit..... and you'll be amazed that once its gone, you wont even miss it.....