I want to simplify my life I said,
sell this house and buy a condo instead.
I want more time looking at beaches and boats,
Less time pushing my lawn mower,
Or dragging around that leaf blower.
Forget the ups and downs of real estate,
Buying low and selling high, that’s never been my fate.
“Just do it” has become “do it sooner, not later”
the risk of waiting just keeps getting greater.
It sounded so simple.
Just downsize, we said. Let go of
things you no longer need. I know we
didn’t think the packing and moving would be easy, but now we are swimming in a
flood of conflicts—it’s heave-ho vs. heavens-no! We’ve only
lived in this house for seven and a half years.
We have no basement and I was thrilled
to realize we have managed to limit our attic storage to seasonal
decorations—Halloween, Christmas, and so on.
But now— as BB King likes to tell us, “the thrill is gone.” It left me when I came down from the attic
having counted twenty-five plastic tubs and five bags of decorations.
It should be simple, but you have to swear off a lot of other
things to get it done, including, at least temporarily all of your friends. There are Facebook friends, LinkedIn Friends,
email friends, phone call friends and a few special go-to-lunch friends. They’re all put on hold for a while. Don’t even try picking out the ones you want
to keep.
First, let me apologize to my Facebook friends, I don’t have
time for you, you are buried in a tidal wave of stuff I just can’t wade
through—from pictures of dogs to group photos of no one I know. Forget it, I don’t need to know that much
about you right now.
Those of you on LinkedIn, I’m retired. When I was working, I was too busy to look at
it. Today, I don’t care.
The rest of you will hear from me once my life is simple
again. I’m thinking mid-2014.
In the mean time, there are books and bicycles, beds and
bookcases, cabinets and coffee makers, chairs and china hutches, couches and
cookie jars, Dressers and dishes, desks and dinnerware, games and gadgets.
Relying only on impulse and intuition, we keep or pitch kitchen
utensils and keepsakes, lamps and luggage, photographs and phonics books. Each one is a decision, and there is no grand
principle to follow.
One of us thinks we are ahead in the race to the finish, and
that would not be me. We have two weeks
to go, and I counted eighty-two pieces of furniture, and forty-two more spaces
to undo and pack up. Then it all has to
be carried somewhere. I don’t mind the thrift
store or the solid waste recycling center.
They’re free. The storage locker,
on the other hand is anything but.
Today, we have fifty boxes packed at home, thirty or so
boxes stored at my son’s house, six in the storage locker, four went to a woman
we know with a young family, two boxes of books went to the library and there’s
no telling if anything has really gone to the thrift store yet.
Of course, I’d be lying if I claimed to be the innocent
here. I counted fourteen pairs of shoes
for me—ok, that included tennis shoes, sandals, etc. I got that down to nine so far. My spouse has so many I can’t get an actual
count, diligent efforts led me to an obviously low estimate of thirty-five
pairs. If she can make a comparable
reduction, she will dump twelve pair.
Raise your hand if you could do that in your closet today. By the way, she read this piece over my
shoulder, and promptly bought another pair of shoes this week.
And then there’s the garage, it’s loaded. But, no worries, I can be merciless there—after
all, it’s my space. It all goes, except
for my toolbox, drill and 2 saws. I do
have a few things. Anybody want a jar
full of rusted nails? How about a hole
saw perfectly-sized to install a doorknob, or just some of the remnants of
parts from a variety of items I installed or assembled since roughly 1985
(tragically, in our 1985 move, a number of boxes of garage items and some
Christmas decorations vanished without a trace). But, hey, it could be worse. Did you know Jay Leno has a collection of
cars, trucks and motorcycles that numbers 120?
Imagine what his garage looks like.
So, I’m simplifying my life, risking my friendships and my
sanity as I do. Right now, I’ll settle
for simply surviving simplification.
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