More About My Practice Giving Up Things

I had designed a beautiful guest room in our house in Bend. Most of the furnishings were family hand-me-downs: twin antique twin beds, crochet bedspreads and dust ruffles, a funky old chest of drawers I had stained and painted to match the douvets I'd made, a child's little roll-top desk and chair, a lady's chair and small round tea table, and quilts. I knew I would never have a room like that again, but I was not happy about giving it up this beautiful room.

The solution came slowly. At first I stored most everything. When my husband and I moved to our current home, we embarked on a substantial remodel. The painted chest became the base for the vanity and I transformed one of the douvets into a shower curtain. It's a beautiful room and I love it!

There was room for the little roll-top desk at the end of the hall. It serves as a display for my vintage dolls and children's books. I donated the bedsteads to the local Humane Society thrift shop (I enjoy thinking about the benefits it gave to a few animals)and I found relatives who wanted the bedspreads crocheted by our mutual ancestor.

The point of this long-winded description is that part of adjusting to down-sizing is repurposing furnishings and giving up the rest to just the right recipients. I must remind myself I've done this before and I can do it again!

I Have Practice!

In thinking about how to downsize, and all the emotional baggage that goes with it, I must remind myself that I've done it before. A few years ago, I went from a large home in Bend to a smaller rental house to a townhouse over a two-year period.

In moving from my dream home in Bend, I had a huge yard sale. I had a collection of vintage clothing and let almost all of it go. One was a college prom dress Mom had made for me. It was floor-length brocade with a matching jacket. A hippie-looking woman asked if she could try it on over her leotard. It fit her perfectly. As she twirled around in my driveway, her face lit up. "I'm going to a wedding in the park. This will be the perfect dress to wear!" she declared. Her reaction created a second happy memory for me around that dress.

A father arrived at the sale with two young children, a boy and girl. He was teaching them how to bargain for the items they wanted. Several years before, I had created a furnished scale model of a condominium for an interior design class. It had been a lot of work, and I'd had it on display ever since. I had priced it at $2.00. I watched as the young girl studied it. "Would you take $1.00 for it?" she asked. I said yes. "How about 50 cents?" I pretended to think about it. "That would be all right," I finally answered. "Dad!" she shouted. "I bought a house!" Again, I was given a happy memory.

It's been my experience that when I find good new homes for things for which I have an emotional attachment but will no longer keep, the sting is taken out of the parting.

House Hunting

Bill and I went house hunting yesterday in our desired location. We only had two on our list, and it didn't take us long to rule out the first one.

Before I tell you about the second, I want to give you an idea of what we are looking for. We want to be able to "age in place" in our next home. Hopefully, we have a lot of ambulatory years left, but someday, one or both of us are likely to have problems negotiating stairs. One of us may have to use a walker or wheelchair eventually. So a one-story home makes the most sense.

I may have already mentioned that I want to continue to have a garden, and I'd like to have chickens and enough outdoor space for the grandchildren to play. Most new homes these days are on small lots, so it seems to make sense to find an older home. I've had quite a bit of experience designing remodels, and I relish the challenge of making our last home perfect for us. An older ranch-style home on a good-sized lot would seem to be a good choice.

Now about that second home we looked at. The three photos on the realtor's web site were indistinct, but the description of the yard caught my attention. Indeed, the yard had wonderful potential, with tall cedars in the back, a charming tool shed, and lots of room for kids, chickens, and a garden. However, despite my well-developed imagination, the house could never be made right for us. The layout, the weird roof, the blue vinyl siding ... all were wrong.

So the best I can say is that the journey has begun for real. I'm sure there will be many more chapters before we find the home that will suit us.

To Finish or Abandon Projects I've Had on Hold

A friend once told me a story about her grandfather. He had been a creative sort and had lots of unfinished projects. One day, he decided it was time to finish each one. He set to his task, and after a period of a few short months, had finished them all. The next day, he died. My friend’s conclusion was that if a person wants to extend his life, he should never complete everything he’s begun.

Do I believe this? I don’t suppose it matters whether I do or not, because I doubt that I will ever finish everything I’ve started. But the question remains, what projects should I abandon, complete, or save for our up-coming move. Fortunately I have some time to decide, and some time to complete the ones I deem important.

Here are a few I want to get done before the move:

Clean out my closet.

Finish my jewelry-making projects and dispose of the leftover supplies (I’m working on it.)

Organize family photos (Done some significant work, still more to do)
Dispose of things in the attic we won’t be taking with us (Made some progress on this)

Get rid of all my recipe clippings (See blog post about that)

Repair or discard all clothing on the repair shelf

Here’s an undecided:

Fabrics for clothing I’ve yet to make (Do I try to get the items finished now or take the fabric with me? Will I ever sew something from scratch again?)

What projects do you have on hold? What projects have you finally let go of and how did you feel about your decision afterwards? I’d love to hear your experience.

Parting With Harriet

I took Harriet to Hippo Hardware yesterday. Harriet is a plush hippo toy that was a favorite of my son when he was little. Once Harriet was accidentally rolled up in a borrowed sleeping bag at a rented beach cabin and left behind. Several miles down the road we discovered her missing and had to go back to retrieve her.

This last Christmas my son came to visit and we went through his things I had stored in the attic. Among them was Harriet. He claimed to have no attachment to her, so I figured it was time to let her go. I knew just the place. Hippo Hardware has long been a favorite place of mine to find vintage lamps, bath fixtures, and so forth. They have dozens of hippos on display.

So yesterday I took her in. She was still wearing the hat I had crocheted for her. The people there were very kind and listened to my story about her. They decided that my son might want to bring his children in someday to visit Harriet, so they put a little tag around her arm with his name on it.

I feel better knowing Harriet is in the good company of other hippos. It's not as if she's entirely gone, as we have photos of her. I'm not exactly "happy" with my decision to part with her, but I am content.

Letting Go of the House

Although we don't plan to be moving for another year, we are looking at the possibility of purchasing our retirement house now while prices and interest rates are down. If we find something months before our move, we'll rent it out until that time. That means we're thinking and wondering about the kind of house we'll be living in for the rest of our lives.

All that to explain my husband's statement the other morning as he was dressing for work in his closet. "I wish we could take this house with us when we move," he said with a sigh. I understand his sentiment. We've worked very hard to make our house the kind of home we enjoy. It was repossession and was trashed when we bought it. Our biggest improvement was turning the fourth bedroom into a master bath with a soaking tub, "stereo" sinks, and a separate toilet room. My husband's closet is the front half of the former ugly and difficult master bath.

In downsizing, maybe we won't be able to have separate closets. Will we be able to have a soaking tub that we now use regularly? We love to cook together. Will our new kitchen accommodate that? Will I be able to continue with my Elfery, the playhouse under the stairs?

More about Letting Go of the House next time.

Piles of Magazines and Clippings

One of the things I have difficulty parting with are magazines. There's so much good stuff in them, especially recipes. I've been working on a cookbook forever, and I enjoy looking for new dish ideas. The trouble is, the cookbook is just a side dish, so to speak, in my life. Whimsmoore.com, my toy business, keeps me very busy. So the magazines pile up. When I do take the time to look at them and clip out the recipes that appeal to me, I'm adding to an already big pile of clippings. When am I ever going to have the time to study all of them? Clearly I am not being rational about this long-time habit of mine.

The first step I've taken is to cancel all of my magazine subscriptions. That way I won't be tempted. The second step I've begun is to scan the clippings I have into my computer, organizing them by category. If I still have a pile of recipes and/or a pile of magazines by June 8th, I will throw them out. I'm asking you to hold me to that promise!

Deciding Where To Move

Dreaming about where we'll move to and what our home might look like helps to keep my mind off what we'll have to part with. We'll be moving because we want to be closer to children and grandchildren, not because we have been transferred and/or found a job there. I've moved several times, three times to different states, so I know I can "bloom where I'm planted."

Bill and I have zeroed in on a city that's pretty much halfway between our kids, and has enough amenities that should be able to sustain us into our old age. The town is small, but houses a good hospital ... a major requirement. I hate to think it, but one or both of us is likely to need a hospital toward the end of our life. It will be good if our spouse won't need to travel very far to visit the other.

There's also a good library and senior center. There are plenty of opportunities for hiking, boating, fishing, golf, etc. which we look forward to enjoying, and which will be good places to take our grandkids. We'll surely miss our near-by public recreation center and the opportunities for ballroom dancing.

It took us quite a while to find the right church in our current city; there's no doubt we will miss it. How difficult will it be to find the right one in a smaller town?

What to do with Old Photos and Slides?

I went through all of Mom's albums and scrapbooks last night, intending to throw them away after looking at them one more time. However, one of the albums held photos and other memorabilia from my parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary. I asked myself if this was something that would have interested me if it had been my grandparents' or great-grandparents' anniversary. The answer was "yes." So I've decided to do something with this material for my descendents. I'd liked how a cousin had made a small album for each of us with photos and clippings of the legendary trip our dads, as young men, took to Chicago. Creating a small album around a specific event seems like the way to go with these anniversary materials.

This brings me to the subject of all the other photos I had accumulated over the years. Not only did I have boxes and boxes of slides, I also had a huge box of old family photos that had been passed down to me. A year ago I decided it was time to "take a bite" out of all this stuff.

The first thing I did was to contact my ex-husband to see if he was interested in any of our mutual-family slides. He was, and offered to scan the slides and convert them to a digital format. When he was finished, he made CD's of the images our son and both of us. I was then able to discard the slides and all of the slide equipment. Yea!

Later I found a few more slides and took them to Wal-Mart to have digitized. The result were so poor, I threw out the CD. Fred Meyer was slightly more expensive, but the results were much better. Frankly, I don't know how long the CD images will last, but I will not go to my grave with tons of slides as my parents did!

Scanning was a partial solution to the old photos as well. (It depends on your equipment and the resolution one wants of course.) I scanned the photos I thought my brother and cousins might like and emailed them in attachments. They were thrilled to have pictures they'd never seem before. As with most family photo achieves, there were many unidentified people. I scanned those too and sent them to our family historian. I also gave her one entire photo album that had belonged to a mutual relative.

I boldly threw out photos that I was sure would never have any meaning to anyone again. I now have one medium-sized box of old photos. Someday they will have to be dealt with, but I feel as if I've made significant progress in this area.

One cool result of all of this work was that I discovered some very fun photos of my mom as a child at the beach with her family. There is no doubt of the era (1920's) because of the style of swimsuits. I printed up and framed five of these images and hung them in our guest bathroom. I expect we'll have these in our next guest bath too, assuming we'll have a next guest bath. But I'm not ready to think much about that just yet.

Downsizing Mom

We are foolish if we believe that things are going to stay pretty much the same day in and day out. I was reminded of that today when I brought mom back from a ride to her memory care home. She's had a lovely room there for three years and is well taken care of.

We placed Mom in the home when Dad died. The experience was very traumatic for our family. Mom, having Alzheimer's, had to be tricked into going there. We brought a few of her furnishings with her and had to dispose of the rest. It took months to get everything squared away, selling some things, donating others, and incorporating a few into our homes.

Since that time, Mom's situation has stayed pretty much the same. That is, until last week when she had to be moved to another room because she'd been disturbing the other residents at night. So this afternoon, I tackled the last of Mom's downsizing. I'll find new homes for her chest of drawers, night stand and favorite painting. What's going to be difficult is throwing out all of the wonderful diaries and scrapbooks of my parent's travels around the world. A reminder that these travels were not objects to cling to, but memories to enjoy until memories end.

Getting Started

Last Sunday I gave away a little coat my mother had someone make for me when I was three. It was beautifully constructed, and she had saved it for many years, then passed it down to me. I suppose it could be labeled a "collectible" these days. But how many "collectibles" can I keep? My hubby may retire at the end of the year. When that happens we plan to move. We want to be closer to our kids and grandkids, and we see a need to downsize. Moving I can handle, but downsizing? The very word strikes terror in my heart!

When Bill and I married seven years ago, we bought a house big enough to hold most of our combined household goods. We were both proud of the homes we had established as single people, and we weren't ready to give up our cherished possessions. (Bill did agree to sell his dark, heavy bedroom suite; we sold it at our garage sale, sleeping on the bed overnight in the driveway.)

Back to the present ... The saying goes that to eat an elephant, one must take one bite at a time. So that's what I've started doing and that's where the little coat came in. I knew none of our family would care about that coat. But I know someone who has a little daughter and the sensibility to appreciate this little piece of history. One precious thing down and many more to go.