Aging ain't for Sissies
Aging isn't easy. My name is Marcy Backhus and I am your host! Make sure your complete well-being is handled with a community and information that can make it easier and FUN. Aging needs humor, which you can find in the "Aging ain't for Sissies" Podcast, along with informational guests that give us the information we need.
Aging ain't for Sissies
A Smaller Home Can Hold A Full Life
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We tell the truth about downsizing: it’s emotional before it’s practical, and it can be one of the most freeing changes we ever make. We share what we learned moving from 4,000 square feet to 800, including how to release guilt, keep the memories, and build a home that fits our real life.
• downsizing versus moving and why it feels so personal
• advanced hiding versus true decluttering and letting go
• anxiety from accumulated stuff even when it is “organized”
• curating a smaller home with only what we love and use
• separating memories from objects and keeping meaning without boxes
• why adult kids often do not want inherited belongings
• faster ways to rehome items through Buy Nothing groups and donation pickups
• decision fatigue and why selling everything can stall progress
• planning a realistic timeline and working in small categories
• choosing for your current lifestyle rather than a fantasy life
• boundaries with family about what stays and what goes
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From Big House To Tiny Condo
SPEAKER_01Hello, and welcome to AGA for Sissies. My name is Marcy Backis, and I am your host. Well, over four years ago, I moved from a home of about 4,000 square feet into an 800 square foot condo. That is not downsizing people. That is disappearing your belongings under a witness protection program. I'm telling you. I got rid of about 90% of everything we owned: furniture, dishes, decorating, clothing. I want you to think about your garage alone, the amount of tools you have, hammers. You talk about all kinds of things that you're not going to need anymore. I live in a condo. I have a maintenance man. We don't have to do anything. We don't need a trimmer. We don't need an edger. We don't need a blower. We don't need a power washer. We don't need. I want you to just think about what I did for a minute. Boxes of things I had not touched in years, but what were apparently emotionally prepared to defend my life with. And here is the surprise. I have never been happier. I do not miss the square footage. I do not miss the rooms I barely used. I do not miss taking care of all that stuff. I do, because you literally are the caretaker of that shit. Excuse my language, but you are. I do not miss wondering what was hiding in the back of the closet. I still have that problem from time to time because when we rebuilt the closet in here, there's a set of shelves from the original closet that are built in and in the back. The bottom shelf is for the cats to sleep in. Anyway, so occasionally I can still have that moment. Oh, and I definitely do not miss owning 17 serving platters for three times a year that I use them. I I do miss one thing. I do miss family dinners. But one kid lives in California, the other lives in Denver, so those are gone anyway. Whether we are here or not, I don't have those Sunday night dinners anymore when the kids live nearby. So those platters? Nope, don't need them. Downsizing taught me something I did not expect. Sometimes a smaller life is not a lesser life. Can I repeat that? Sometimes a smaller life is not a lesser life. Sometimes it is the first time your life actually fits. And that, my friends, is why aging ain't for sissies.
Why Downsizing Hits Different
SPEAKER_01Hello, my friends, and welcome to Aging Ain't for Sissies, the podcast where we laugh, tell the truth, learn from one another, and figure out this aging business together. I don't act like I know everything, but I do try to look into information for us to help us out. I'm your host, Marcy Backis. Today we are continuing our aging survival guide that we're working on this summer. When I'm done, I will have an actual printed-out version that you can print out. But right now we're working episode by episode. And this one is downsizing. Not just moving, not simply switching houses, which Craig and I did multiple times. For those of you that don't know, we started out living in Venice Beach. We moved Venice Beach, California. We moved out to Wood Ranch, California. From Wood Ranch, California, we moved to Texas. From a condo in Texas that we were just renting, I lived there six weeks and we moved to Denmark. We lived in Denmark for a while. From Denmark, we moved back to that rental in Texas and then bought a house there. We're in that house for a short time and we decided it was time to move to Oregon. We moved to Portland, Oregon. We lived in a rental for two years. Then we bought a house and lived in a house for two years. Then we moved down to California. California, we bought a house in Koto de Casa, the land of the Orange County Housewives. Yes, yes, yes, it did all start there. We lived there for 23 years. But after 21 years, we sold our house just before the pandemic, not knowing there was going to be a pandemic. Rented a house because we weren't sure what we were going to do, ended up in that rental for almost three years, and then moved here. So I'm not a newcomer to moving, but downsizing is not moving. And so we're talking about downsizing, that very personal, emotional, exhausting process of deciding which parts of your life are coming with you and which parts are going to the goodwill. So as I said, four years ago, I went from approximately 4,000 square feet to 800 square feet. I got rid of 90% of what we had. And people sometimes look at me as though I survived a natural disaster. They ask, how did you do it? Do you miss your things? Wasn't it emotional? What did you keep? What did you regret? And of course, where do you put everything? The answer to the last question is simple. You do not put everything anywhere. You stop owning everything. That is the entire point. Now I'm not gonna lie, we do have a storage unit. It does seem like a decent sized storage unit with a decent sized amount of stuff in it. But when you take into consideration what you probably have in your garage right now, it's nothing. Downsizing is not about finding clever containers so you can cram the same amount of stuff into a smaller home. That is not downsizing, that is advanced hiding. Real downsizing asks harder questions. What do I actually use? My favorite question, and one of the reasons I'm the happiest I've ever been where I live, is because everything Craig and I have in here we genuinely love. I don't have anything in my condo just because someone gave it to me or just because I bought it at Home Goods or any of that crap. What we have here is a carefully curated collection of items that we love. It makes a big difference. What am I keeping out of guilt? What am I saving for the future that is never coming? The future that is never coming is what I mean in that. Why do I have six colanders? I did, by the way. How many decorative pumpkins does one person need? Apparently, not 25. Today I want to talk to you about the emotional side, the practical side, the family side, the wonderfully freeing side of letting go. Because downsizing can feel like a loss, but it can also feel like getting your life back. And I'm going to tell you, stuff gives me anxiety, even well-organized stuff. I reorganize my little spots that I do have here every couple of months. Because as you know, when you have a cupboard, it gets awry, right? Like things don't go back completely where you want them. Well, let me tell you something. When you have limited space, things need to go back exactly where they came from. There's nowhere else for them.
Learning To Stop Bringing Stuff In
SPEAKER_01All right, before we get into today's topic, let me give you a little update on what's been happening in my life this week. Just nothing. Enjoying Chicago in the summer. Went to three separate orchestra type concerts last week. One outside, one inside, one in a cathedral. Just all great music. Living my best summer life here. Walking hither and yon. You know, it's funny. I walk the same distance in the winter as I do in the summer. It feels much lighter in the summer, I'm not gonna lie. Not gonna lie. Walking in a big coat and heavy shoes is way different than walking in shorts and sandals. I love it both times now. I I can tell you that. But it is very different. So I'm living my best life. Next week, I have a little trip planned with some girlfriends. Looking forward to that.
SPEAKER_00Um, you know, and and sometimes it's funny.
SPEAKER_01I, you know, we go in and out of people's homes and we go to churches, and oh, that's the other thing. I'm working on a church committee and getting things straightened out there and have a Zoom meeting tomorrow morning. And I love all those things. But sometimes a visit to someone else's home reminds you how much stuff people accumulate. Right? When you visit people's homes, sometimes it's easier to see other people's accumulation versus your own. Now I look at it from a whole nother perspective because I don't have it anymore. And that brings me back to downsizing because once you have lived with less, you become very aware that every new object needs a home. Now, this I love my friends, but my friends will send me things and I'm thinking, do you really know that I don't have anywhere to put this? There's no extra closet, there's no garage I can tuck it into. My bathroom is carefully curated with what I have and what I use. I actually owe. Speaking of my bathroom, one of my greatest things this week, Craig was not home. Where did he go? He did something, and I had a whole lot of extra time with nobody in the house. And I was able to tear my bathroom apart, pull everything out. I dumped so much makeup, so many lip glosses, so many bathroom products, half used. I don't like, I won't use. I got rid of everything. And it feels so good. I don't have the room for stuff. I just don't. It has to be stuff that I use and I like. And if I don't, I don't have room for it. I no longer casually bring something into the house. I interrogate it. Where are you going to live? What are you replacing? Are you useful? Are you beautiful? Are you worth giving up a valuable cabinet space for? It's less like shopping and more like conducting a job interview. Now, my storage unit, I'm not gonna lie, has my holiday goodies in it. Now, I got rid of most of my holiday stuff. I kept a little Halloween, a little Easter, a little of everything. But even that is too much. I don't even use it all to decorate. So this year, as the holidays come up, starting with fall, I'm gonna go through and I'm gonna get rid of stuff again and just keep the things in there that look good in the condo that are things I enjoy. But that extra pumpkin that I haven't put out since I got here, if it has not been put out, I've lived here four years now. If I have not used that decoration in four years, it's going to the goodwill. So downsizing doesn't stop, it continues.
The Memory Is Not The Thing
SPEAKER_01All right. So as you know, I did this. It was a lot of house. You have all that room to fill. You fill it, you have furniture for each room, you have decorations for each season, you have closets, you have cabinets, you have shelves. It when you have a big house, no matter what the size, if it's bigger than where you're going, it's a lot. It's a lot to fill. And you fill it. We don't make decisions on stuff like I just talked about because we don't have to. We put it off for the day we downsize. Well, guess what? That day is here. You decide to move into 800 square feet, later arrives all at once. And let me tell you, Craig and I weren't planning this. We had sold our home, we were in the rettle, COVID hit, his business tanked, he got a job offer here, and we took it. And we already owned this condo. So, for those of you that don't know the story, we bought this condo 25 years ago as an investment piece. When we got this opportunity to move to Chicago, why not? We already have a place to live. It was an easy decision to make. Now, put away all the weather and all that, I didn't know how I was going to deal with all that crap, but I've done it. And as you know, I'm happier than I've ever been. I will say something. I've been, that doesn't mean, and for my friends listening, it doesn't mean when I lived in California or Texas or anywhere else that I wasn't happy. I was, but not completely fulfilled like I feel here. There was one other time I felt this, and it was funny when we lived in our 800 square foot house, our first house in Venice. And the thing that both of them have in common is we had less stuff. My need for a bigger home every time we moved, my need for more stuff, I thought was making me happy, it was just filling a hole in my heart. And I think a lot of us have had those holes, and we filled it with all kinds of crap and with all kinds of stuff. But I'm here to tell you, you don't need it. Honestly, you don't. I don't regret anything, I don't miss anything. So you have all this stuff. Downsizing forces you to confront how much emotional meaning we attach to objects. Some things represent family, some represent an earlier version of ourselves. There's all kinds of things. The first dollar we made, uh craft surprise on projects we never started. I had a full craft room. I had like, I had it all. I had all the stuff, everybody. It emotionally made me heavy. It physically made me heavy. There's a lot that goes into that. There is a book, and I'm trying to think of it. I will put it on my website. It's about when you're trying to lose weight, but you have all this clutter. The clutter may be keeping you fat. And I that was a fact for me. That was a fact for me. All right. Nobody warned me. Truth number one, downsizing is emotional before it is practical. People talk about downsizing as though it's a math problem. You have 4,000 square feet. You need to fit into 800 square feet. You must eliminate a certain percentage of your belongings. That's not how it works. Seems simple, except nothing about it feels simple. When you are holding your child's kindergarten artwork, your mother's serving bowl, your wedding china, or a sweater you wore during an emotional or important part of your life. Objects become storytellers. They remind us of who we were, how we lived, where we lived, who we loved, how how we loved, what we celebrated, what we survived. Getting rid of an object can feel like getting rid of the memory, but the memory does not live inside the object. Did you hear that? The memory does not live inside the object. That is one of the hardest, most freeing lessons. Your mother is not in the china cabinet. Your children's childhoods are not trapped inside a box of school art. Your marriage is not contained in every wedding gift. Your younger self is not living in the clothes you no longer wear. The memory belongs to you. If you need to, which I did not do any of this, you can take a photograph. You can save one meaningful item instead of 20. You can tell the story. You can pass something to someone who will use it. And I did that. Oh, did I do that? You can let the rest go. Letting go of an object does not erase the life connection to it. Do you understand that? I know it doesn't feel like it. And your children probably do not want your stuff. Mine didn't. And the stuff that Kyle did take due to a bad relationship, Kyle had to leave and left most of everything I had given Kyle behind. So I found people. I put my grandma's um crystal serving plates up. I had a set of 24 my mom had given me. And a woman, I put them on a buy nothing group through Facebook. It was the greatest thing. Let me tell you, buy nothing groups, look them up on Facebook. These are people that would rather take things than purchase things. And it was the greatest gift to me because I gave away most of my stuff through that group. And a woman, she's like, oh, my mother collects this. She'll be so happy. Great. Let your mom have it. Take the burden off of me. You may not want your silver tea service, and your kids may not want it. There is all kinds of things. I let the kids take what they want. I didn't shame them for things. It's not their job to keep the family memories going. They took what was important to them. Alec was actually moving at the same time and was getting rid of everything because he would only take what fit in his car. I gave him a medium-sized box. I marked it Alec's Important Things and I said, fill this with what you want to keep that you think maybe one day will be important. I'll take care of it. And he did. When he's ready, I'll ship him that box. But he's not. He's still living a nomad's life. He's not ready to settle down. My kids are not in that place. If your kids have bought in their own home and that kind of thing, I've got a 30, almost 34-year-old, and almost 32-year-old, and neither one of them are anywhere near keeping track of my stuff that I've given them.
Giving Away Beats Selling Everything
SPEAKER_01Kyle does have some of it. Trust me, I worked for five days in a storage unit that Kyle has, trying to help Kyle understand things. I want to also tell you this. If you want to sell your stuff, go ahead. But I sure hope you got a lot of time. Because for me, I gave myself six weeks to get rid and pack. Remind, mind you, I had to pack to move to Chicago. I had to pack things that would go on storage. I had to pack things that would come to the condo. I had a great system. Everything was numbered. I have a sheet, it still works. I put the numbers on all four sides of the box, just telling you this. Because that any way the box goes in, you can see the number. And I have a notebook with a list of what's in each one of those boxes. And I still use it. It still works 90% of the time, except for 10% of the time, Craig has messed it up. But it's still helpful. All right. So just know your kids probably don't want anything and let them take what they want. Also, like I started to say, if you want money for your things, good luck to you. I needed to get rid of things then and now. I didn't need them sitting around with people asking me, well, what size is it? Blah, blah, blah. Let me take a sip of water here. Um, I wanted it gone and it worked for me. I didn't need the money. I needed the stuff to be gone. At the beginning of downsize, you feel very motivated. You pull out a drawer, you create piles, keep, donate, sale, trash, keep, donate, sell trash, don't keep, donate, sell trash. Eliminate that sale pile. I'm telling you. Three hours later, you're holding a packet of soy sauce from 2019 and crying. And that is true. That is called decision fatigue. So I also had another plan. I contacted a veterans group that did pickups. Getting pickups of items is hard. And mine was after like in 2022, right after the pandemic. Goodwill, all of them were overfilled with people that had cleaned out while they were staying home. But I did find the veterans group and I scheduled a pickup every Tuesday and Thursday. I asked them, what are my maximum amount of boxes? And you better believe your sweet Bippy, I had that many boxes for them to pick up every time. I also scheduled one of these bagsters. It's like a gigantic IKEA bag. Think about IKEA bag on store on steroids. It's what people use instead of a dumpster. So it's a dumpster-size IKEA bag. But I could, Kyle helped me fold it out in the driveway and I filled that full of all the stuff to throw away. And they came with a big truck and a crane. They picked it up and took it away. Of course, you pay for that, but I got it done. Downsizing does involve thousands of decisions. Do not try to make all of them in one weekend. I gave myself six weeks. I created a plan. I started with the garage. Once I finished the garage, I started it up in the upper right hand, I can still see it, corner of the house that was my craft room, and I worked from there. All the way down the house. And the last thing I did was the kitchen. It worked great for me. Working in smaller categories. If you have to do one drawer, one shelf at a time, go ahead. Shoes today, towels tomorrow, kitchen gadgets on Saturday. Figure out whatever worked for you. But going room by room, starting with the garage, because it was the biggest task. I want you to think about your garage. And I want you to think about going somewhere where you don't have a garage. I don't have a garage. I have a parking spot for my car in a garage, but I can't put anything around it. All right. You do not need to keep enough for every possible emergency. You don't need extra sheets. I need two sets that I rotate. And then I got new colors. I got rid of those. I can't just have them around. Serving dishes for parties I no longer host, I don't have winter coats for weather conditions. I did keep my winter coats, but if you're going somewhere warm, you don't need them. It depends on what you're doing. Don't keep things for hypothetical scenarios. Your home should serve your real life, not every possible version of your life. Think about that. That's why I'm so happy. My house serves my life. I have a freaking tiny kitchen. I had more cabinet space in apartments when I lived on my own. But I've made it work. I have what I need. Craig and I, I, and just an FYI, I got rid of all of our dishes but two sets. My fine china that I use every day, and the dishes that Craig and I registered for, um, sake dishes, I can't remember the name, Creighton Barrel back in the day. And I have those dishes. And it's more than I need, way more than I need, but it's fine. Doesn't hurt anything either. I have the room for it. But Craig and I use our fine Frank Lloyd Wright China every single solitary day. It serves our real life. If you need something, trust me. If I needed platters tomorrow, I got five friends I can borrow platters from. You can rent things, you can use disposable things. You can ask someone to bring a platter. You can improvise. You do not need to store an entire event that may happen once every seven years. Your everyday pieces matter more than that hypothetical, hypothetical dinner party. And downsizing absolutely means not giving up beauty. Keep the things that bring you joy. Who is that? That Marie Kondo, Kondo, Kondo. Does it spark joy? This is when you're going to ask that question. Does it spark joy? Do I love it? Does it mean something to me? Absolutely. Did Craig and I buy furniture when we moved here? Hell yes, we did. The only thing we brought was a coffee table and two chairs and two stools. Oh, and the wine rack. The wine rack I use with a board across it, and that is my entryway table. Okay. We needed to buy a couch that fit and suited this area. We did. Got a side table. Where I do my podcast from, it's called the Dream Box. It is my office and my craft station all in once, and it all closes up into looking just like an armoire. We recently bought a piece of, oh, and then we did a whole wall of built-ins. Because that's what suited the space. Think about the space you're moving towards. Don't take crap that doesn't work.
A Realistic Plan For Letting Go
SPEAKER_01Here's some survival strategies. What are you moving towards? Do not begin with what you're losing. Begin with what you're gaining. Walk around and think about what you're keeping. But also don't keep things if it's not going to work in the space. Okay? I only have elevator access. I walk everywhere. We travel a ton. The one thing I have in my closet that takes up space is my suitcase. And I have it, you know, we do a lot of um like those Marishka dolls or whatever they're called where you stack. Like things need to be stackable here. You stack inside, stack inside. So I have my suitcase in the closet. It has a suitcase inside of it. It has a carry-on inside. You know, like it's it's definitely space thought. But we travel all the time. I need them here. I don't need them in the storage unit. I need them here. There are things that you'll put in your storage unit. I swap out my clothes. We definitely have a summer season and all other seasons here. Um, but my co-I can't keep my giant coats here in the summer. I don't have room to put both wardrobes in. So one goes, one comes. I was choosing, you know, when we moved and we did this, we chose a different way of living. Now I'll tell you the thing I'm still struggling with clothes. I'm gonna admit I buy clothes for a life that I don't live. I don't work anymore. I go to the gym five days a week. In the winter, nobody sees what you're wearing. You're wearing a big ass coat. I finally, as this summer is calming down, am coming to the realization, as long as I don't get any fatter or skinnier, I have enough clothes to last me. I really do. And I'm gonna try to honor that. Now, I'm not gonna be perfect, but I'm gonna do my best to not continually consume shoes and clothes. That's a tough one for me. Now I got rid of a ton of clothes moving here. Then I lost 50 pounds when we got when I got here. So that caused me a whole nother problem. So I had to take out all my clothes for the heavier Marcy out of my closet. They are living in my storage unit. I need to get rid of them. But um, those of you that know, you know there's a mental part to that. And since I have the room, I'm not too worried about it. But I do need to get rid of them. Um long as I stay this weight, I have enough clothes to last me. I could even lose another 10 pounds and I could still wear the clothes I have. So, you know, I want you to measure your space before you make decisions. I am lucky I am married to an architect. He drew a floor plan of this place, measured all our furniture, and we figured out what would work and what wouldn't. I do have all my bedroom furniture, my bedroom side tables, my bed, the chair that was in our bedroom, and our dresser. I have all of that, it all fit perfectly. Um, like I said, we did buy some new pieces of furniture that suited the space and fit the space. If you cannot identify where something will live, it probably should not move. That's not cruel, that's geometry. Choose your best, not all the rest. And I talked to you about that. Choose your best. I Craig and I kept our China. I actually hadn't unboxed our China because I was afraid of earthquakes in California would ruin them. So I have them here and they're in my cabinet, the built-in cabinets we have. Um they're displayed beautifully, and I use them every day. Okay. Ask yourself positive questions instead of what should I get rid of? What deserves a place in my new life? What needs to move on and make someone else happy?
SPEAKER_00You can do that.
SPEAKER_01Your available space is your container, and fill it, not over over the brim, right? I want you to think thoughtfully about your new space. If you can get a floor plan for it, draw a crude one yourself, kind of basically figure out where things can go if you're not an expert architect like Craig that I'm married to. Or find someone, if you have a friend that is, ask them to do it. Craig just did it for our friend who is downsizing from her beautiful big condo here. And she's moving into a gorgeous space, but smaller. And Craig was able to work out a floor plan. All right. Keep memories without keeping everything. Now, I did my mother had made Kyle a lot of beautiful clothes and Alex and things. I kept all that. That's why if you can't afford, if you like me and you don't have a garage and you can afford a small storage space, keep those important things. Those are darn important to me. My old dolls, not so much. I got rid of so much stuff, but things my mother had sewn, no, I kept those. Make those decisions. Don't keep everything though. All right, let your current life vote. Ask these questions. Do I use it? Do I love it? Would I buy it again today? Does it fit in my current home? My current body? Ha ha ha ha. We just talked about that. My current lifestyle. Again, I'm struggling with that. I dress on Sundays for church. I dress when we go out to dinner, or if I'm going out with friends or doing something, or my Friday night AA meeting. Other than that, I'm in workout clothes. And I don't come home and change. I'm keeping it for the fantasy version of my life. Your current life gets the deciding vote. Not the person you were 20 years ago, who you are now. If you are retiring, you're not going to need work clothes anymore. I want to remind you, I have another podcast inside Marcy's mind. This week we'll be talking about something super positive, just the little joys in life. I also have a podcast about sobriety since I've been sober for 38 years called Unbottled. You can find all my podcasts where you found this one, Apple Podcasts, everywhere else. Also at my website, Marcybacchusmedia.com. I drew a blank on that, Marcybackismedia.com. And all the handouts and fly things I've made, you can find them there. All right.
Family Boundaries And A 10-Item Challenge
SPEAKER_01I want to remind you, you're not alone. Imagine a woman named Carol. Carol has lived in the same home for 35 years. Her children grew up there, her closet is full. The basement contains furniture, toys, holiday decorations, old tax records, tools, school projects, and several mystery boxes no one has opened since the Clinton administration. Carol knows the house is becoming too much. The stairs are harder, the yard is expensive, repairs never stop, she wants to move. But every time she walks into a room, she becomes overwhelmed. Where does she begin? What will the children want? What if she gets rid of something important? What if she regrets leaving? So Carol does nothing. She tells herself she'll start next month, but next month becomes next year. All you do is it becomes bigger, it becomes grander, and you can't handle it. Carol does not need to empty the whole house this weekend. She needs to begin with one drawer, one shelf, one bag at a time. I want you to know that if you are Carol and you're not ready to do it now, but you know it's coming up, I'm going to tell you to start now. Nobody should do it in six weeks like me. That was insane. It wasn't a choice. It was necessary. The things I do not miss, I don't miss all the rooms. I don't miss all the crap. I don't miss driving into my garage. Now, most people can't drive in their garage. Oh my gosh, this podcast is becoming long. I'm sorry. Um, I don't miss driving into my garage, even though we could fit two cars in there. We had everything boxed and all around. It was overwhelming to me. Little did I know, and I have learned it now, and I've shared it with my children, that driving in that garage brought me such anxiety, such anxiety that I came home always in a bad mood, pretty much, because it put me in one. It gave me anxiety. It was something I didn't understand till now. I have apologized to my kids. I've made amends and said I'm really sorry for mom being such a bitch sometimes. It wasn't you, it was stuff. All right. This is getting too long of a podcast. Uh, just the last thing I want to tell you. Family needs to get involved when you want them to and not before. They don't get to tell you what to take. They don't get to tell you what's important, they don't get to make you keep things just because they want them. If they want them, take them. If you want it, take it. I want to remind you, start early. Begin with easy categories, trash, expired items, broken items, duplicates, things like that. Work in short sessions. Now I didn't have that luxury, but I had a plan every day. And I went, my plan was to start early in the morning and be done by one. And I did it every day. I was done by one. I went and did something fun, met a friend, worked out, went out for lunch, did something. I did not make myself crazy. Remove items quickly, hence the reason why I didn't sell. I wanted them gone. Track your progress, which you know I did with my list. Every box had a number, every number had what was in the box as a basic idea. Photos, Christmas, Thanksgiving, whatever the main items were in that box. Ask for help if you can't do it on your own. There are friends, family, professional organizers. There are senior move managers, people that will come and help you at a fee, all of this. Donate pick up donation pickup services. Like I told you, I had that set. And protect your, I had an area in the house of things that were going with me in the car that were not going in with the moving truck. My electronics and our most important papers. They went with me. All right. I'm going to give you a little challenge for the week. Choose 10 items to remove from your home. Not 10 pieces of paper, not 10 expired coupons, 10 actual items. I want you to donate them, give them away, recycle them, throw them out if necessary. That broken pot on the side of your house that you were going to put together for a plan or make a mosaic on, get rid of it. The goal is not to transform your entire home this week, it's to let you know you can do this. It's practice. Maybe keep practicing for a while. And before you know it, when you're ready to do it, you'll have done enough practice that you've got this taken care of. Four years ago, I moved. I changed by 30, probably 3,200 square feet. I got rid of approximately 90% of what we own. It sounds dramatic. It was dramatic. But it was also one of the most freeing things I have ever done. I learned that I need far less than I thought. I learned that memories survive without the boxes. I learned that my children do not need to inherit every object connected to our family. I learned that what's important to them may not have been what was important to me, and it's important to ask them. I learned that space has a cost, not only financially, but severely mentally and physically. And if you think it doesn't, take a look at some of your behaviors and actions when you feel overwhelmed by what you have. I learned that every possession asks something of us. It must be stored, clean, moved, protected, organized, maintained. And eventually someone has to decide what happens to it. Most importantly, I learned that a similar, a smaller home, excuse me, can hold a very full life. My life has never been as full as it is now, and I live in the smallest home I've ever lived in. My happiness did not depend on the number of rooms. In so many years I thought bigger was better. It depended on whether my home made it easier to live the life I wanted. Downsizing is not about punishment. It's not about deprivation. It's not about erasing your past. It's about making room for your present. Maybe you are not ready to move. That is okay. Start with one drawer. Maybe you never plan on moving. Start anyways. Clear your space. Don't leave this for your children. If you're planning on never moving, still do move it, do it downsize, even as if you were moving. Don't leave this crap to your kids. They don't want it. Okay, that was a very long podcast. I want to thank you for joining me for another edition of Aging Survival Guide. I hope today's conversation gave you some encouragement. I hope I didn't stress you out. Whether you're prepared to move, helping a parent downsize, or simply trying to figure out why you still own three fondue sets, please follow Aging Eight for Sissies. Leave a review, share this episode with someone who has a basement, attic, garage, storage unit, or closet that is beginning to make threats. Next week, we will continue the survival guide with a conversation about retirement. What happens when every day becomes Saturday and Saturday stops feeling special? It happens. I am Marcy Backis. This is Aging Ape for Sissies. Take care of yourself, enjoy your life, and remember, Aging Ape for Sissies, but neither is getting rid of your wedding child.
