Downsizing 101: Making decisions
The thing is, when you are downsizing, every single thing you do involves a decision.
Which room/area do I start in? Do I want to cruise around the house, getting rid of stuff that's easy to decide on (like, say, emptying the trash cans, or throwing out piles of old magazines) or do I want to focus intensely on one area and plough through from start to finish? Will I need an actual plough?
Those are just the start, though. Once you're in a space, every damned object requires a decision. These fall into a variety of categories, which boil down to "keep or get rid of", but are far more involved than that in practice. There are things that have sentimental value, such as the salt & pepper shakers that my grandmother gave me that she thought were so funny because the one playing the clarinet has crossed eyes, as if she were blowing really, really hard. And truly, they are adorable, right? So they are an easy KEEP. And there are the champagne flutes that my ex-husband and I got while touring the Chandon winery in Napa Valley, California. They're a terrific size and weight, but they are strongly associated with that relationship and trip, and I have some other champagne flutes anyhow, so they are an easy GET RID OF.
Of course, if something goes in the "keep" category, it means I have to figure out whether it's going to move into my sweetheart's house with me, or move into some form of storage, either at his house or in a storage unit (because hey, I've got a bunch of furniture, and two kids in college who might need/want some of it to set up their own houses once they're out). And if something is in the "get rid of" category, it's even trickier. The options there include 1) give to a specific person; 2) give to charity; 3) sell (which opens up its own hornet's nest of hows and wheres and such); or 4) throw away/freecycle at the curb. The basement desk, for instance, is moving to my pseudo-stepdaughter's house, and the basement desk chair, which was a bit busted, went off in the back of a stranger's pickup truck the night before last week's trash day.
These are decisions that have to be made for every single item in my house, whether it's a piano (sell, if I can), a cake plate (keep these two, give away/sell the other - why yes, I have three cake pedestals, don't you?), or table linens. And it applies to every. single. item in the kitchen. Every wooden spoon, every skewer, every spice jar, utensil, appliance, teacup . . . you get the picture. And that's just a "for instance", since I've been working on the basement for the past three weeks, where the issues include every picture from elementary school that I kept (meaning photos of the kids as well as drawings by the kids), essays and poems and homework that the kids did, two six-foot tall bookcases full of books (still full after sending seven boxes to the library and a full box to my pseudo-grandkids), an enormous amount of scrapbooking, quilting, cross-stitch and other craft supplies, and more.
I am happy that I've started the process now, since it's going to take a while to get through everything. And I am happy, too, that I do a bit every day, and that I don't do more than an hour or so at a time, max. Because all of those decisions add up, and after a while, you get "decision fatigue", which, it turns out, is an actual thing. I first heard of the notion when reading a profile of President Obama in Vanity Fair last fall, when it's explained that he only picks blue or gray suits so as to avoid having to make a lot of choices (although the actual term is not used in the article):
“You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits,” he said. “I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.” He mentioned research that shows the simple act of making decisions degrades one’s ability to make further decisions. It’s why shopping is so exhausting. “You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia.”
I suppose that what I'm suggesting to those of you who are considering paring down, whether it's for a future move or because it's just time to scale back and free up a bit of space in your current lair, is to limit your sessions (if you can), so that you don't hit the fatigue point. In my case, it meant that it took something like 9 sessions over the course of 5 days to go through a bunch of photographs, and I still have all those craft supplies to tackle. But so far, I haven't driven myself nuts.
Which is a good thing, since my downsizing is in advance of an eventual move into my sweetheart's home, and there are a whole bunch of decisions to be made there, too, which adds another complication . . . but the end result is so worth it.
Which room/area do I start in? Do I want to cruise around the house, getting rid of stuff that's easy to decide on (like, say, emptying the trash cans, or throwing out piles of old magazines) or do I want to focus intensely on one area and plough through from start to finish? Will I need an actual plough?
Those are just the start, though. Once you're in a space, every damned object requires a decision. These fall into a variety of categories, which boil down to "keep or get rid of", but are far more involved than that in practice. There are things that have sentimental value, such as the salt & pepper shakers that my grandmother gave me that she thought were so funny because the one playing the clarinet has crossed eyes, as if she were blowing really, really hard. And truly, they are adorable, right? So they are an easy KEEP. And there are the champagne flutes that my ex-husband and I got while touring the Chandon winery in Napa Valley, California. They're a terrific size and weight, but they are strongly associated with that relationship and trip, and I have some other champagne flutes anyhow, so they are an easy GET RID OF.
Of course, if something goes in the "keep" category, it means I have to figure out whether it's going to move into my sweetheart's house with me, or move into some form of storage, either at his house or in a storage unit (because hey, I've got a bunch of furniture, and two kids in college who might need/want some of it to set up their own houses once they're out). And if something is in the "get rid of" category, it's even trickier. The options there include 1) give to a specific person; 2) give to charity; 3) sell (which opens up its own hornet's nest of hows and wheres and such); or 4) throw away/freecycle at the curb. The basement desk, for instance, is moving to my pseudo-stepdaughter's house, and the basement desk chair, which was a bit busted, went off in the back of a stranger's pickup truck the night before last week's trash day.
These are decisions that have to be made for every single item in my house, whether it's a piano (sell, if I can), a cake plate (keep these two, give away/sell the other - why yes, I have three cake pedestals, don't you?), or table linens. And it applies to every. single. item in the kitchen. Every wooden spoon, every skewer, every spice jar, utensil, appliance, teacup . . . you get the picture. And that's just a "for instance", since I've been working on the basement for the past three weeks, where the issues include every picture from elementary school that I kept (meaning photos of the kids as well as drawings by the kids), essays and poems and homework that the kids did, two six-foot tall bookcases full of books (still full after sending seven boxes to the library and a full box to my pseudo-grandkids), an enormous amount of scrapbooking, quilting, cross-stitch and other craft supplies, and more.
I am happy that I've started the process now, since it's going to take a while to get through everything. And I am happy, too, that I do a bit every day, and that I don't do more than an hour or so at a time, max. Because all of those decisions add up, and after a while, you get "decision fatigue", which, it turns out, is an actual thing. I first heard of the notion when reading a profile of President Obama in Vanity Fair last fall, when it's explained that he only picks blue or gray suits so as to avoid having to make a lot of choices (although the actual term is not used in the article):
“You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits,” he said. “I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.” He mentioned research that shows the simple act of making decisions degrades one’s ability to make further decisions. It’s why shopping is so exhausting. “You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia.”
I suppose that what I'm suggesting to those of you who are considering paring down, whether it's for a future move or because it's just time to scale back and free up a bit of space in your current lair, is to limit your sessions (if you can), so that you don't hit the fatigue point. In my case, it meant that it took something like 9 sessions over the course of 5 days to go through a bunch of photographs, and I still have all those craft supplies to tackle. But so far, I haven't driven myself nuts.
Which is a good thing, since my downsizing is in advance of an eventual move into my sweetheart's home, and there are a whole bunch of decisions to be made there, too, which adds another complication . . . but the end result is so worth it.