Pressure: n. the burden of physical or mental distress; the constraint of circumstance; the weight of social or economic imposition; the application of force to something by something else in direct contact with it.
Pare: v. to trim off an outside, excess, or irregular part of; to diminish or reduce
Because I haven’t posted in a week you may think that I’m moving prematurely into slow blogging.
But no. I’ve just come to the realization that I can no longer afford to think about down-sizing. I need to DO down-sizing. Which means putting time and effort into planning, divesting, tossing…
Which means that instead of thinking about P words, I’ve been inventorying my stuff in preparation for the Great Divestiture.
Really, there’s no way I can go looking for some cute little shoebox until I sell the home I have – my beloved home.
To buy something, even a shoebox, would be silly when it could take months to sell my place in this challenging real estate market. And who wants to be paying for two places?
I’ve made myself a fine Excel spreadsheet on which I’m listing all my stuff, including measurements (will it fit in my shoebox?), and whether it’s a keeper, a give-away, a “store it in case the kids ever have real homes AND want Grandma’s embroidered antimacassar” , a “will it sell on eBay?” or “could I just dump it?”
I started with the easiest space – the guest bath. How much can a guest bathroom hold? I asked myself. Turns out quite a bit: a nice little rug, an antique commode, three pieces of art, and a very very very old Greek water jug. Sigh.
None I want to part with. And I’m just getting started.
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It is going to be hard. But giving up things can be liberating also. I’ve been doing quite a bit of this lately: not because I need to downsize ( my house is already a tiny little box) but because I was starting to feel tied down and crowded by stuff.
And giving stuff away feels good.
I’m thinking of the process as if I were Michelangelo – freeing the beautiful statue of David from the excess marble that hid him!
A necessary evil that is painful, whatever mental approach you take.
I don’t suppose it will help you to know that eventually, you’ll feel much freer and wonder why you didn’t pare things down a long time ago.
Stick at it!