I plan to talk about this a lot more here, but being chronically ill and disabled led to me taking drastic action in an attempt to have better quality of life. So far, it has been hella frustrating and difficult.
Although we have tried various times over the years to downsize (Spousal Unit and I never seemed to be on the same page at the same time with this), we still wound up moving entirely too much superfluous stuff to Florida. Given that a) this house is much, much smaller than our house in the Rockies; and b) this house also needs significant renovation, the result has been that we have mounds of stuff that has nowhere to go and those mounds keep getting shifted from place to place as we need access to the spots where the mounds have accumulated.
To me, right now, our entire life feels like the chaos section of this bookstore:
I am sure it will get better – eventually. Right now, however, I am wishing that we had been able to get rid of much more *before* we packed and moved thousands of miles.
The interesting thing, psychologically speaking, has been the shift in our attitudes once we moved to a radically smaller house and transitioned to a climate where things mold, rot, rust, and otherwise decay so much more quickly. Sentimental attachments have all but disappeared. The “but we might need this someday” fear has been overcome by the realization that, in this climate, by the time we’d “someday” need it, it’d probably be decayed beyond usefulness anyway.
We are now confronted with the stark reality that a) we have too much useless stuff; b) no one is likely to want our stuff once we’re gone; and c) if we have to stub our toes on it all the time, we don’t want it either!
My final hurdle is that I am allergic to mold and dust, which makes it very difficult for me to go through all the old papers, pictures, and books and decide which things I want to keep. And yet, I’m afraid to just chuck it all, because some of these things do still have value for me (sentimental and otherwise).
However, many things which have been hauled unquestioned literally across the globe (across oceans and back) are now being jettisoned.
Because my quality of life depends on a healthy environment and removal of stress, and because I am no longer capable of physically maintaining so many possessions, I am letting go of things (like my books) which I clung to for so long. Spousal Unit and I joke that it’s the same kind of survival minimalism that the pioneers experienced when crossing the Great Plains – “There goes the piano!” “The oxen can’t carry the load any more – say goodbye to the heirloom grandfather clock!” Hard choices are being made. But, under the circumstances, they don’t seem as difficult as they used to. The ultimate choice is survival.
