Downsizing Most Everything

[5oakterrace]

I am curious about folk's experience with downsizing, retirement, minimalism. We just retired and went from 4 bedroom house with in-law apartment (she died after 26 years with us), very seasonal and very rustic cabin, to our retirement house with 2 bedrooms. How many coffee pots do we need? Plates? Furniture? Pictures? Donated most of it.

Gave away all suits but one, ties, working on the sport jackets, probably 1500 books, 3 bikes (down to 3 - kind of a reverse n+1). I figure if I am not riding it much, why keep it. I also figure it makes things a little easier for whoever is around after I take my last ride.

The kids toys stay - grandkids might visit one day. But photos! Oh Lord. Who in the world will ever be interested in keeping our wedding pictures? Threw out a bunch of those. The bride initiated this too! My refrain, " we do not keep our parents pix, do you think our sons are gonna keep this?"
It is remarkably hard to let go of stuff, but afterwards freeing. Do not miss a thing. I mean how can we miss something we do not look at or use and some of it can be useful to others.

Now... The dress shirts. I will never wear these again... And I am giving away some bike parts (stem, seat) which are probably not worth the postage ( which I find to be exorbitant). How these stores send stuff postage free is beyond me...

[verticaldoug]

Originally Posted by 5oakterrace

I am curious about folk's experience with downsizing, retirement, minimalism. We just retired and went from 4 bedroom house with in-law apartment (she died after 26 years with us), very seasonal and very rustic cabin, to our retirement house with 2 bedrooms. How many coffee pots do we need? Plates? Furniture? Pictures? Donated most of it.

Gave away all suits but one, ties, working on the sport jackets, probably 1500 books, 3 bikes (down to 3 - kind of a reverse n+1). I figure if I am not riding it much, why keep it. I also figure it makes things a little easier for whoever is around after I take my last ride.

The kids toys stay - grandkids might visit one day. But photos! Oh Lord. Who in the world will ever be interested in keeping our wedding pictures? Threw out a bunch of those. The bride initiated this too! My refrain, " we do not keep our parents pix, do you think our sons are gonna keep this?"
It is remarkably hard to let go of stuff, but afterwards freeing. Do not miss a thing. I mean how can we miss something we do not look at or use and some of it can be useful to others.

Now... The dress shirts. I will never wear these again... And I am giving away some bike parts (stem, seat) which are probably not worth the postage ( which I find to be exorbitant). How these stores send stuff postage free is beyond me...

I would scan the photos before throwing those. We have old photos of previous generations scanned, and someday down the line, the grandkids will want to see, or want to use something for a school project on roots.

Clothing if you haven't worn it in the past two years, out it goes..

If you have a ton of stuff, you may want to consider an auction. When my parents downsized, they held an auction which was a lot of work, but worth it. (the two interesting takeaways were the professional reseller/scavengers who show up and try to crash the auction process and buy things on the super cheap, and we had a lot of old hunting rifles and shotguns which is what everyone wanted.)

[oldguy00]

Originally Posted by verticaldoug

I would scan the photos before throwing those. .....

My parents, now in their mid-70's, did this a couple years ago, hired someone to scan their photo albums and gave us kids a copy of the dvd discs. I'm glad they did. Not sure how often I'll look at them, but now I have the option and for just storing a couple of discs.
Tip - make a few copies, throw one in safety deposit box or somewhere safe, discs are easy to lose!

[oldpotatoe]

Good for you and we did the same thing as the 2 sons moved out(altho both boomeranged...more than a decade ago)..and our downsizing has come in stages. We both retired about 7 years ago...we nanny the 2 granddaughters 2-4 days per week..but mostly at their house(9yo and 7yo)..do a few sleepovers every couple of months..

We intend to move out of our 3, now 2 bedroom house(combined their rooms into one bigger bedroom) into something smaller, with no stairs..2 bedroom. No outside maintenance, type thing, when grand daughters and son/DIL move..when kids change schools(school in now K-5)....

But..PICTURES..when my parents died, my brother cared not one bit about pictures..so I got them and I'm glad I did. My family on my father's side didn't do that so my 'history' on his side is lost..So, Yes, we have wedding pictures(2022 will be 50 years)..and yes, I kept a smattering of USN uniforms(not sure why I kept those)...

So, yes, downsizing is GREAT, even bike stuff. BUT be careful about chucking family history stuff...IMO, YMMV and all that.

[Wattvagen]

Very smart of you.

I was kind of scared straight after cleaning out my parents house when they passed. i threw out or donated countless items they clung to. eventually you figure out that much of the stuff they thought they couldnt just get rid of because it was "worth something" - you can barely give away, and the few items we did sell brought pennies.

i ride with a gent who manages a chain of self storage places, and he'll tell you his amazement that people will come in, rent a little cubby, pack it full of their "treasures" and never come back, faithfully paying the couple hundred a month for the mental security of their junk having a place to live without having to look at it. crazy really.

one trend that has really changed, as i see it is furniture. grandparents generation would save their pennies and buy what they considered heirloom quality furniture, thinking eventually their kids would treasure the old hutch. turns out once they kicked off, their kids were all old enough to have a house full of their own furniture. i think these days people are buying less ornate, less expensive and less quality furniture pieces, updating them more often and generally accpeting that they are throw away items.

the digital revolution has really made pictures easier. we paid a decent chunk of money to have my parents old photos digitized and i'm glad we did. we have a few of those digital photo frames around the house that scroll through pictures and it's kind of nice to catch a passing glance of my parents in the old days. takes up no actual space and keeps the memories fresh.

[Kingfisher]

I went through a similar experience 3 years ago when my wife passed away from Alzheimer’s. Went from large 4 bedroom house in country to smaller more residential living
Got rid of 95% of “stuff “ accumulated over many years and my only regret is not holding on to all the photos.....all else can be replaced.

[paredown]

Originally Posted by Kingfisher

I went through a similar experience 3 years ago when my wife passed away from Alzheimer’s. Went from large 4 bedroom house in country to smaller more residential living
Got rid of 95% of “stuff “ accumulated over many years and my only regret is not holding on to all the photos.....all else can be replaced.

Sorry for your loss, KF.

I was sorry that I couldn't be there to help when my siblings finally cleaned up the family house after my mom passed. By the time they got down to it, Covid quarantine requirements were in effect for Americans coming into Canada...

While I didn't want 'stuff' from the house, I would like to borrow the photos and scan and pass out copies to the sibs--and I have little confidence that any of them will do it.

The personal down-sizing has started--not that it is that visible yet--but we have a handshake deal to list this house in a year and a half-so I better get cracking.

(And thanks for the reminder about 'dress' clothes--I have shirts that have not been worn for probably 10 years--as a country guy, the only time I get dressed up is for weddings and funerals, so I could get by with one set...)

[buddybikes]

We bought our now pre-retirement/retirement house 3.5 years ago. Our old house was (very old...1700's post and beam) not large 1450sq down to 2br 1 bath 920sq house on the water (Narragansett). We pinch ourselves we found such a place. Taxes are high, but this we planned for, as we rather live in blue state. Would estimate that 1/2 belongings or more were gotten rid of, including some 2 nice Bilenky tandems that I sold here. (these were highly nostalgic as our daughters rode stoker)

This is our morning coffee now:

IMG_0563 copy.jpg

[Tandem Rider]

Mrs TR and I both have lost our parents, we found out the hard way what it's like to go through stuff. My Dad was a retired HVACR contractor, for example, he had boxes and shelves of parts for equipment that was obsolete 30 years ago. We both vowed to not do this to our kids. We went through the first stage of this when we moved cross-country. We kept the family pictures and the art. I got rid of lots of bike stuff, kept the medals and special jerseys. I have 1 marryin'/buryin' suit. I gave away a bunch of stationary woodworking equipment, jointer, bandsaw, as well as some automotive tools such as dwell meter, timing light. We cut our occupied space in half. I don't miss any of it, and I haven't replaced a bit of it either. It is so freeing to not have to be concerned about so much stuff. George Carlin comes to mind.

[texbike]

It's amazing to hear the universal call for the keeping/preservation of photos. We had an elderly family member pass away last Summer and have been in the process of redoing an old farm-house that's been in our family for over 100 years. In both cases, there has been a ton of stuff to dispose of or distribute. Interestingly, the photos and old pictures have been the most in-demand items (along with old tools, musical instruments, and firearms). I can say that they've brought an incredible amount of joy to the family to see them and to hear the associated stories. Plus, while digitized photos are OK, there's just something more engaging about actual, physical photos that you can hold and look at.

Texbike

[wc1934]

Originally Posted by Wattvagen

Very smart of you.

I was kind of scared straight after cleaning out my parents house when they passed. i threw out or donated countless items they clung to. eventually you figure out that much of the stuff they thought they couldnt just get rid of because it was "worth something" - you can barely give away, and the few items we did sell brought pennies.

i ride with a gent who manages a chain of self storage places, and he'll tell you his amazement that people will come in, rent a little cubby, pack it full of their "treasures" and never come back, faithfully paying the couple hundred a month for the mental security of their junk having a place to live without having to look at it. crazy really.

one trend that has really changed, as i see it is furniture. grandparents generation would save their pennies and buy what they considered heirloom quality furniture, thinking eventually their kids would treasure the old hutch. turns out once they kicked off, their kids were all old enough to have a house full of their own furniture. i think these days people are buying less ornate, less expensive and less quality furniture pieces, updating them more often and generally accpeting that they are throw away items.

the digital revolution has really made pictures easier. we paid a decent chunk of money to have my parents old photos digitized and i'm glad we did. we have a few of those digital photo frames around the house that scroll through pictures and it's kind of nice to catch a passing glance of my parents in the old days. takes up no actual space and keeps the memories fresh.

Yup - our antique furniture is no longer in vogue - guess kids prefer West Elm, IKEA etc.
We did have all our vhs cassettes converted to cds. That was worth it.

[doomridesout]

What size suits do you wear? I’m a new attorney and decent suits are pricey.

[benb]

I'm no where near retirement but my wife & I probably resemble some of the newer traits and we also forcefully try and make ourselves downsize our stuff from time to time.

If stuff isn't getting used it's gotta go and there's a lot of clutter that we all seem to want to hang onto for no reason.

My wife has mostly made me get rid of my excess amount of books. References and college texts I've kept but most stuff that was just fun stuff I read is gone. I've been using a Kindle for 11 years now though, so I'm still accumulating books they just don't take up physical space.

I am really thinking about downsizing some of my photo gear. That was a huge hobby of mine for a long time. But at some point I got sick of using the high end gear.. it takes up space, ties up money, it's heavy to lug around. These days I like to play guitar.. that takes up some space too, I am feeling a need to get rid of some of the photo gear to justify the music gear taking up space. The music gear gets used way more. For photos I increasingly just want to use my phone.

Furniture.. we have almost no furniture from anyone in our family. Similar with kitchen items. Our generation often got married older.. we had to buy a lot of that stuff ourselves when we were living alone.

We made a conscious decision we were not having a set of "china" and "silver" and "crystal" which I think is a big break in our generation. It never gets used, and it is no longer any mark of status or success.

Our photos are mostly digital.. I do have a box of film and slides I need to go through and toss.

I did a big purge of bike components a while ago but probably need to do so again. Stuff gets taken of a bike pretty used, you stick it in a box and figure you might need it to build up something or replace something. It sits for years, componentry moves on, it's just a waste.

We literally just took delivery of a new dining room table and 6 chairs.. The old dining room table is going to become my desk. My current desk is going to become my son's desk. My son's kiddie desk we just gave away on Facebook and it's already gone this morning. We are giving away 4 out of the 6 old dining room chairs too. Keeping 2 for big family get togethers.

I know there's going to be some massive cleanup of family members houses at some point if nursing homes happen, etc.. both my parents and my wives parents have ridiculous amounts of "stuff". Baby Boomer "downsizing for retirement" often seems to be 3500-4000 sq. feet of condo jammed full of stuff with 1-2 unneeded bedrooms completely built out with furniture. Both our parents downsized to bigger places than we are raising our son in. Our house is not exactly small by historical standards either though. But we're in a duplex, we'd love to go to a single family, but practically nothing new comes on the market under the 4500-5000 sq. ft and $1.5-2 million range.. we do not want that much house at all.

Our generation surely accumulates electronic junk like no other though. Ugh. Been purging some of that stuff too, but I have a 9-year old computer next to my desk that needs to get "cleaned out" and recycled.

[Matthew]

My wife and I did the downsizing thing and have absolutely no regrets. Went from almost 4k square feet to 1332, and could have probably gone even smaller but our hood has a minimum sz requirement. No kids so we never accumulated too much stuff but we donated or sold a ton when leaving the bigger house. Hung on to some family pics as both sets of parents/grandparents are deceased. We had our new home built and the utility costs are far better than the big house. This is our retirement /forever home, moving is very stressful to her. And I'm fine with that! Now if I could just get her to stop buying paper products! !!

[2LeftCleats]

Agree photos and videos are a tough issue. My wife has been diligent about documenting our—and especially our children's—lives. Digital makes it easy now. Several years ago one son was able to compile many videos, from VCR to the tiny cassettes, onto a thumb drive, allowing us to toss bins of now unplayable formats. What remains are lots of albums and no real inclination to scan them to digital format. We'll let the kids pick through those over time.

We waded through lots of kidstuff and set a goal of one large bin for each. As they establish their own places, we’ll offload those.

We planned for over a year to move to a smaller place. This involved not only house stuff, but dismantling a pottery studio and wood fired kiln. Gave away lots but filled a 20 cu. yd. dumpster.

Also turns out to be a very limited market for the inherited antique furniture and China, so much of that was donated.

We feel pretty good that what remains is what we really need and use, but even that’s going to be reconsidered as we age.