Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Chairs and other items waiting to be advertised on Craigslist.

Our covered patio has been the staging spot for sorting our possessions.  What stays, what goes, and what's in limbo.  We have thrift store piles, Island recycling piles, piles for items to be advertised on Craigslist, boxes of treasurers for friends and family, and landfill piles.  

 

How our porch presently looks -- a mess!

A box ready for the thrift store.

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle dominate my life right now.  Although our previous home on Saratoga Road was only 1000 sq. ft., because of it's cottage style it could handle more decorator items -- art on the walls, baskets on the shelves, candles on the tables  -- than our new,  more contemporary and smaller, spaces.  Now, at 860 sq. ft. (according to the assessor) we have fewer shelves, display walls, and closets.  More importantly, however, we want our new contemporary space to look crisp.  Without any clutter whatsoever.   The task is challenging and frequently heart wrenching.

For days and days now I have been going through a life time of treasurers.  The questions:  will we use this again?  Can someone else make better use of this?  How many weeks, months, years has it been since we've used it?  Regarding our photographs.  Is our access to them impossible based on the magnitude of the collection?  Would we enjoy them more if their numbers were fewer and their organization better?  Will we read this book again?  Are we hoarding?

When Ed worked at General Telephone years ago, the big planning question was, do we develop our capacity for Mother's Day (the busiest day of the year) or for normal traffic?  We ask ourselves the same question.  Do we want to design our home, furnish our home, maintain our home for the busiest day in our lives or our normal day-to-day lives?  This question must be asked often, especially in relation to kitchen and dining items we've had in excess for holidays.  Is its use important enough for storing it the rest of the year?  We're finding that we can now answer with no.  No, it's not worth storing all year just for one or two days.  We'll make do on those days.  

Recently I made that decision regarding a bunch of Christmas tins.  I had purchased them from our local thrift store for filling with candies for Christmas gifts.  Many of the gifts went to family members so when the holidays were over, and the candies were gone, the tins were left behind.  My decision was to let the thrift store store the tins.  Next Christmas I can buy them again.

Our friend Elliott has been a mover and shaker in helping us find homes for many of the items we no longer need.   He's been the adoption agent.   For example he placed a pottery lamp by Peter Wolf, a lamp we had used and loved for years, with Peter's son.  How cool is that?  Tables, rugs and other items have gone to other community folks.  Bookshelves to a family needing to organize their library.  Trinkets here, there, and everywhere.  And then, once Elliott's carried our stuff home, gone through the boxes, keeping some items, finding homes for others, he carries all the remaining items off to the thrift store.  What a friend!  Most people offer moving help at the front end of the process.  Moving from one dwelling to another finds friends carrying boxes in and out.  Not Elliott.  His help has been at the tail end of the move, at a time when help is so very, very valuable, and unexpected.  At a time when exhaustion and way too many decisions have left us screaming for help.   Ah, there's Elliott.

We are now out of the storage area that we've had for the past three years while we've been living in our temporary apartment residence.  When we left Saratoga we placed many boxes in storage.  We didn't have a clear picture of our new home and what we'd need so we stored way too much -- just in case.  We were, after all,  still in the design process and the size, layout and spaces were not yet determined.  We didn't know what would work and what wouldn't in the new spaces.   Our logic was that once we had our new space we could more easily tackle the decisions of what to keep.  So now it is decision  time.    We are eliminated some items because after not having them for three years we now don't care about them any more.  And others because this house is more contemporary and our old things don't fit the new surroundings.  Still others because if it doesn't get used often we don't want to store it for occasional use only.   And, finally, our tastes have changed.

In the  process of designing our home our friends advised us to build lots of closets.  We rejected the idea.  In our thinking, more closets equal more stuff.  Both Ed and I were committed to living a life of simplicity.  Fewer things to maintain, store, think about, deal with.  A simpler life would mean, we though, and still do, more time and space for the really important aspects of our lives.  Besides, if we don't make these decisions now, at our ages, we're simply leaving the task for our kids.   Nope.  Don't want to do that!  Fewer closets equals less stuff!

What's hidden from view in this process is the anguish of parting from "old friends".  We're talking baby clothes, gifts from my long deceased parents, antiques from our grandparents, hand embroidered pillow cases, collections of crystal ice cream dishes, candle sticks, bird houses, books and skulls.  Treasurers of a life time.  With the ice cream dishes I didn't even unwrap them.  I simply dropped them off at the thrift store, intact in their storage box, labeled "ice cream dishes".  Straight from storage to Good Cheer.

Several years ago I was offering everything I was ready to rid myself of to my son.  Not junk but things with value like an antique china cabinet.  After a few of these transfers Brad said to me, "mom your life is getting simpler but you're making my life more complex."  Now I don't offer but he understands he can have what he wants.  Less pressure that way.

At any rate, the job is not done, but we're getting closer and closer to having our possessions reduced down to simply what we need.  More sorting will happen through the years as it is an ongoing process, but happen it will.  Our commitment is huge to keep simplicity a key concept in our lives.   That doesn't mean our hearts don't feel like they're breaking a bit from time-to-time, but the rewards far outweigh the emotional strings.