Your grandmother’s china. Your mother-in-law’s bedroom furniture. The files for your college thesis. Your children’s sports trophies. It’s amazing what one can accumulate over 20, 30 or more years, particularly if you have never moved. It’s finally time to come to grips with these and perhaps hundreds of other things that fill your suburban home or your city condo. You are moving to a smaller space, whether from the suburbs to city, or to a more manageable city apartment or perhaps an independent living community. You’re downsizing. Your “stuff” won’t all fit. And if you are moving with a spouse, double the stuff.
If you optimistically hoped your children would take the extra furniture, their valued childhood collections, the ancestral china, the antique linens and the silver tea set, think again. If it needs polishing, hand washing, ironing or storage space, you will discover you are in most cases mistaken. Why would anyone want a large mahogany desk when IKEA has a sleeker white one that fits in the bedroom! The treasured embroidered napkins from Aunt Lora have no room in a tiny Pullman kitchen. The scope of the downsizing task begins to become clear. You will have to deal with your own stuff.
You’ve no doubt read about “Swedish Death Cleansing,” the process of getting rid of clutter before someone else has to. Maybe you’ve followed Marie Kondo’s “Tidying Up” advice. Great ideas. I’m willing to bet only a small minority of us have done either. We usually end up with a downsizing deadline, often unplanned. So getting started as early as possible is not a bad idea.
In my case, yes, we’re downsizing – too many stairs in our present home – and no, no Swedish Death Cleansing took place. Where to start? Whatever seems easy. For me, the low hanging fruit was mugs. We had over 60 (!). I estimate because some may still be lurking in my husband’s office or art studio, including some leftover promotional mugs for his business. Mugs arrive unannounced on a regular basis, from appreciative nonprofits, Dad mugs from one’s college age kids, to souvenirs of trips from Scotland to South Africa. So how to choose what to take and what to sell? For me it was initially easy. I followed Marie Kondo’s advice, “does it give me joy;” I selected four favorite mugs plus eight that match our pottery. But if your spouse wants his Dad mugs, his university mugs and his golf club mugs, not to mention his army mugs, you begin to see the problem. How many mugs do two people need?
The challenges people face downsizing are as varied as their solutions, differing due to size of home, time in home, number of children and so on. But there are basics we’ll learn from some who have gone through it.
Alice and Paul DeForest
Alice and Paul DeForest spent 32 years in a spacious condo in a former school building in Lincoln Park. The unique space featured lofty ceilings, large rooms, and of course stairs. When the stairs suddenly became a problem, they realized a move would be necessary. Downsizing from 2400 square feet to 1800 square feet, they moved to a vintage building in Streeterville.
“Because we were leaving so fast, I didn’t have time to do a thoughtful sorting out of all my stuff. We had thousands of books and 32 years of accumulations.” Alice had travelled the world as the executive director of the American Academy of Periodontology; she had collections of everything from world globes to Japanese pottery, not to mention an extensive wardrobe and collection of accessories. Her husband, Paul, professor emeritus of political science at the Illinois Institute of Technology, had collected a huge library related to World War II and Hitler.
Step one is common when a move has a tight timetable. She chose an option others in a similar situation often choose. “Yes! so I put [most of] it in storage, so I didn’t have to deal with the decisions right away.” Alice admitted. “A lot of our old furniture was just too large for the new apartment. We put all of our books in storage and eventually gave away ¾ or more of the books.” Alice was fortunate to have excellent help. “We had a marvelous woman who helped us pack and take things to places that would use them. She got us into the new apartment and arranged everything. We sold a few pieces but it’s not so easy. Unless it’s very valuable, it’s more trouble than it’s worth. I did not do a house sale. I didn’t have time…I’m sure I threw a lot of money away. You do what you have to do.”
CCM asked Alice if there were emotional challenges with moving within a couple of months and no time to carefully consider what stayed and what went. Alice has gone back to reduce what’s in storage and found the tougher decisions were particularly related to “things that I had entertained with…dishes and tableware. Some items of clothing I wore to a special event. It took me a while to realize that I could really let go of them. I had wedding presents that had sentimental value. I put them in storage and then sold them later.” It was a two-step process!
Carole Sandner
Alice and Paul have no children, so they didn’t have what many of us hope is a built-in way to divest of our possessions, our offspring. Carole Sandner of Lake Bluff had similar issues with a short timeline but significantly different circumstances. “We lived for forty years in the same house and raised eight children. It had 28 rooms on Lake Michigan on eight acres. When our last child went off to college I wanted to downsize…[it would be] 15 years before we did…my husband absolutely wanted to remain in the house.” So they did.
Jack Sandner, president of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, passed away four years ago. “I was left with the house and purging and downsizing and 50 years of accumulation,” related Carole. “It was overwhelming! I can’t even tell you how overwhelming. Downsizing is definitely a verb! I didn’t know where to start. I got a big storage unit. I started with everything I wanted to keep. Well, that was crazy. I wanted to keep everything so that didn’t work.”
Sandner realized she needed more help. “So I hired an estate sale company. I called in my children. ‘You have got to take it now!’ I called my family members. Then I called my friends. Then I had charities come in. There was still so much.” She went a step further than DeForest and called in an estate sale company. “People were lined up at the gates! After two days, there was still stuff left. Then the estate sale company brought in a charity that took everything that was left. By midnight that night, everything was gone.”
The emotional toll was rough. “There were a lot of tears. Oh my God, I want this back…you have to be brave and strong. The memories…We did so much traveling with the children all over the world. We had a lot of things from everywhere…we were blessed for 40 years…”
Sandner bought a small farmhouse but found her furniture didn’t work. “Only now I’m purging, I go through these boxes and wonder ‘what on earth was I thinking.’ I paid astronomical storage fees on all of this junk!”
But the home sorting project was only part of what she faced. “I also had to empty my husband’s ten room office in the city. I have all the files and all the pictures from his office; I don’t even know what do do with it.”
She also has a condo in Naples, Florida, but that offered no solutions. “Nothing works here either. The only thing I brought to Florida was our dining room table. That’s where we had happy times, sad times…I smile every day and am glad I kept it. The family now gathers around it when they get together. Now I’ve bought a bigger house…I couldn’t even get half the children and their spouses in the farmhouse. It’s never ending.”
Perhaps the most difficult possessions with which to part have sentimental value, but no practical value. Some useful items were kept, of course, like the dining room table that everyone loved. But Sandner had also saved every sports trophy won by her eight children over the years. She was able to devote an entire room to them. When a cherished collection has no monetary value, finding the right home becomes a priority. Fortunately, she found a charity in Waukegan that recycled sports trophies for underserved children whose teams couldn’t afford new ones.
Kay and Michael O’Malley
The decision to downsize doesn’t always come suddenly. Sometimes a beloved family home slowly becomes impossible with aging joints. Sandner’s friend Kay O’Malley had the gradual realization that the four-story brownstone she shared with her husband Michael for 32 years near the lakefront in Chicago, no matter how lovely, was not working with her knees. They explored options like an elevator and stair lift: “We had a white oak staircase, and it was beautiful, and the thought of putting in a chairlift was awful. We had tossed around the idea of moving but we really liked the lifestyle and liked our neighbors.” The O’Malleys had raised two daughters, now with their own homes and families.
“We loved that home. We had been inspired by a movie about this New York brownstone with a roof deck. We thought it was the neatest thing. We fell in love with this one instantly. We had a nice, elegant lifestyle. 32 years. Our two girls went to Parker.”
“Just thinking about this [brings] a lot of emotions…not just the memories of the family but also the things – the objects that fit in there that didn’t make it somewhere else. We finally decided to sell. It was the stairs that got me.”
Although the O’Malleys had been thinking about downsizing for some time, the reality of leaving came much sooner than expected.
“We contacted several realtors,” Kay recalled. “We put it on the market to see what happens. We had a full price offer the first day, so it was boom! We had three weeks to get out of the house!”
“Trap number one. Hoping that people will like what you’re not going to use and locating those people takes so much time, not anything that might need care like silver… I was happy to get my parents’ silver. Daughters…they had their own homes and families. You realize more of the things are not going to go with the new lifestyle.” Their home in Florida would take some possessions but not all. “Naples is not the chandelier kind of place.” Other belongings went to a shared family home in Lake Geneva.
“Once we decided to move, we rented an apartment in Chicago. Everyone in the apartment building is 20 years old, and they all have a dog. One of those ultra modern apartments. It’s fun because it’s different. It led to total panic and a mistake. We hired one of those outfits that help you move. …I did not make an inventory. People have to do that…oh my goodness, where’s that lamp I loved. But I have no proof of where it is. That was the next mistake. I was taking all these books to people because they were my greatest treasure. But they’re so heavy, and I was going down three flights of stairs to get them out. So not planning too well.”
“A lot of it is still in boxes we have to go through. When we [first] moved into the house there were boxes I never went through. It is so hard to let go. But unfortunately, this is where you have to let go. These are the kind of lessons. The elegance of the whole thing. The way my husband likes a tablecloth for breakfast. It’s a small apartment and its all modern. There’s a butcher block table in the middle. I sold a few things online on the Real Real. That little part was easy. Toughest? I am a very sentimental person. I kept all those things in boxes in Lake Geneva. I didn’t try to sell anything.”
“A [second] trap. You don’t know what to do with things so you just rent a storage unit. When Mike’s mother passed away, we didn’t know what to do with her things, so we just put them in storage and paid for it for a couple of years and finally looked at it. I did put some things in storage and put a time limit on it of one month. Advice: if you have the time, it’s all about organization. If I’d have made an inventory, it wouldn’t have happened the way it did.”
Connie Schulze
For South Carolina artist Connie Schulze, she and her husband decided to move from Spartanburg to Greenville, SC from a ranch style home to a more efficient townhouse. Sometimes it’s the personal items that cause more challenge than the big furniture. Downsizing meant dealing with many of her cookbooks that had a special family connection. Her mother had for many years chaired or worked on the committee creating the First Lady Cookbooks focused on the recipes of the South Carolina governors’ wives to benefit the American Cancer Society. “Everyone of them my mother had gifted to me with an inscription… It was complicated getting rid of them. It took me years of gradually culling them down. There are some non-negotiables when you are downsizing…for me, I was sentimentally attached to my first pair of running shoes. It took me years to part with them. You really have to confront your sentimentality when you are downsizing.”
Lessons Learned
So, the reasons for downsizing and its challenges are many. Empty nesters need less space, older couples have health issues, death of a spouse may mean selling a house, relocation can involve a new lifestyle. Whatever the reason, waiting until the need is imminent makes the job more difficult. Sort out the items you haven’t used in a year or so. Begin to explore where valued collections might be sold or donated. Talk to your children and relatives about who might appreciate and have room for family heirlooms. Balance the cost of storage with the value of what you’re paying to store. Avoid putting things in storage if you can. You may find in a year or so, those possessions will seem less desirable. Assume your children will not want most of what you’d like to give them. Seek professional help if you have a large inventory.
As we continue our personal downsizing journey, which involved trading a two-story apartment in our three flat with our tenants for their first-floor apartment, we too learned many lessons. Label your packing boxes so you can sort efficiently. Make sure you track the location of the most important boxes so you can find what you need, if you need it. If you pursue a house sale, take time to get everything you don’t want into the sale. It will be harder to get rid of things later. Give your children a firm deadline for taking their beloved childhood collections. But most important, try to focus on the benefits of downsizing. My husband put it succinctly. “I was overtaken with a resolve to stop running a warehouse. I have a painting studio, but half was taken up by accumulated treasures – in boxes. I realized that if it’s in a box, it’s probably not a treasure I can’t live without.”
As you contemplate your own next steps, consider the advice of Sarah Christensen with CHRISTA Senior Living: “Embrace the positive change. Downsizing is not just letting go. It’s creating a space that reflects your current lifestyle and goals. Embrace the opportunity to curate your surroundings, making room for new experiences and connections.”