People always talk about downsizing after they retire, and I have always connected that to moving to a smaller home. I had never given much thought to downsizing your sentimental possessions as part of that process. As we have prepared for our move from Texas to Colorado, we have chosen to evaluate every possession we own and determine if it has a real purpose in our lives and if it is worth paying to move. I can tell you that it has been quite the process to rid ourselves of unnecessary items. Between two garage sales, a dumpster full of junk, weekly trash pickups, giving items to friends and neighbors, and several trips to donation centers, we have managed to rid ourselves of various items, but it was not always easy.

We started this process with two garage sales in October. My mother is not a garage sale person, and as genetics prove… neither am I. This comes into play later. I do remember that 40 years ago, when my parents were downsizing HOMES, she held several gigantic garage sales to sell almost everything. Whenever she purchased something for the new house, she would tell Dad she used the garage sale money. After several months of hearing this “reason,” he told her she used that garage sale money at least 20 times over. Afterward, she no longer bothered to use that line.

For the time being, I live in a neighborhood that does not allow garage sales. The exception is that twice a year, you can “donate” $25 to the neighborhood women’s club to participate in the community garage sale. I spent my first week of retirement preparing for the fall garage sale the first weekend in October. I methodically pulled out items we no longer wanted or used that were easy to price quickly. We trudged even more items to College Station for a second garage sale at my mother’s house a few weeks later. Mom and I earned about $8 an hour for the time spent on preparation and the day of the sales. These results did not improve our opinions of garage sales. There was good news, however: we were able to get rid of more items and donate what we did not sell. There was not going to be a third effort!

Next came the dumpster, which was for the garage clean-out. I am not sure how to describe the chaos that was in our garage, and sadly, I did not take before and after pictures. The garage was full of 20 years’ worth of items left from various projects, hobbies, and an overflow of items we lost track of as the piles grew. Frankly, it was a ton of stuff. Though my husband is a hobby and “idea” addict, our garage also contained everything that I brought home from my office at work. To clearly understand how much stuff that was, you need to know that my office had once been a classroom, and I had turned it into my little haven. Needless to say, our garage had everything in it except our vehicles. We spent three days sorting through the garage and partially filling the large dumpster. This process was so liberating, and we had extra room in the dumpster, so I decided to continue the cleaning binge in the house. Downsizing ultimately turned into a home goods version of “The Purge”… nothing was off limits, and nothing was considered safe.

Tackling the items in the house brought a new challenge to the process because many of those items were considered sentimental or just held more meaning than the items from the garage. Luckily, I had recently listened to the book Keep the Memories, Lose the Stuff by Matt Paxton. Thank you to AARP for recommending this book because Matt’s advice on evaluating your possessions was instrumental in me being able to look at those sentimental items in a new light. I was able to determine what pictures, mementos, etc., I wanted to keep to pass on to my children as part of my legacy. I am well aware that we have held onto items that none of the four children want, but we are moving far fewer of those items than we were planning. That dumpster made it very easy to throw out hundreds of those bad pictures and slides from the 1960s-2000 that we all have from the era before digital cameras. Additionally, many of those pictures were of scenery from trips that will have no meaning to my children. I also tossed much of my children’s saved school work, trophies, and awards. I must admit that I did have to go through each item, but the process moved much quicker the longer I sorted and evaluated our treasures. I had to keep reminding myself that the memories, not the objects, hold the meaning.

Even after the dumpster was removed, I have continued to donate, give away, or toss items daily and will continue this process until the movers are loading the truck. 

Whether you are moving to a different state like us, downsizing your living space, or just decluttering your life, I highly suggest, if at all possible, giving yourself several months to work through the downsizing process of your possessions and/or your space. As you can see, we used a multi-layered approach to downsizing our “treasures.” Many things I did not consider placing in the garage sale in October have now been rehomed or trashed. 

Here’s what worked for us and might help you one day. When I say that we went from “downsizing to purging,” I mean it. After the general clearing and cleaning, we literally looked at everything we were holding on to and asked ourselves if we had used it in the past year. If the answer was no, and if the item was something we would not pass down one day, out it went. After the first few realizations that we were holding on to things for the sake of holding on to them… we felt far more freedom to keep the memory and remove the item.

Just don’t let Robert know that I used this same freedom on some of his old sweaters!

Purge away, my friends; the memories will last without the clutter.