Eight Vital Lessons I learned from Downsizing Quickly

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Oct 6

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Reflecting on my crazy last few weeks

The Organizing shows are all the buzz and Richmond is getting a Container Store. I thought I was ready to downsize…then reality hit!

My husband and I decided in mid-July to sell our home, my car, and most of our belongings in exchange for living in a 300 square foot RV. We quickly sold our home and major items but downsizing presented quite the challenge.

See if any of these ring a bell for you!

8 Vital Lessons I learned from Downsizing Quickly

You never have enough time. We tried to pace ourselves and thought we were doing a good job but the last 2 weeks and then 2 days was a pure scurry.
FB Marketplaceis better than Craiglist. If you think your friends might like something, then share it on your personal page as well.
Your stuff seems to multiple instead of dwindling. We were in a 3K sq foot home and we had different supplies in different areas/floors of our home. We needed to get to our supplies to a 300 sq foot living space.
Always put Like Stuff with Like Stuff so you can really understand what you have. Marie Kondo advises keeping like items together. An obvious conclusion but we were keeping things on different floors out of convenience not realizing how much of one thing we really had. I also started following The Home Edit. They both have shows on Netflix.
Self-care is a must! I scheduled myself weekly massages and tried my best to get some sort of exercise every day. I would read a little fiction from the Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine List with my free Library Libby app.
Some things are going to be too emotional to part with. My English saddle that I rode my horse with for 16 years and then my son used it to take lessons just made me cry each time I thought about parting with it. Even other people were having a strong emotional response to me parting with my saddle. A sweet friend offered to store it and take good care of it. I gladly accepted it. Thank you 🙏 Cheryl!
You need less than you think. We easily forgot what we had accumulated over the 9 years we lived there. Even though we don’t think of ourselves as hoarders, things still found a way into our home - gifts, items you don’t have time to deal with, things you bought for a rainy day, etc. I love Marie Kondo’s question - does this bring you joy? Love it, Use it or Leave it.
Accept Help. Some dear friends offered to help. We were glad we accepted help. It would have been better to hire a professional organizer although.

I still miss my gray Arabian gelding every day. Here I am at age 12 pretending to jump. I couldn’t bring myself to part with his saddle. See #6.

During the height of COVID, I felt paralyzed and the most unproductive I’ve ever felt. We started to do some purging but lacked the energy to be motivated without a looming deadline. It turned out that this whole process was much harder than we expected, emotionally, physically, and mentally. Yes, it felt freeing in some regards and it felt draining as we gave away things we weren’t sure about. The good news is that most of our things can be replaced if need be.

We are excited about our journey and start off on our Grand Adventure on November 2nd (read my previous blog post). We already turned in our Presidential election ballots in late September. Please vote.

I know we are in a better spot today and will continue to purge, organize, and figure out what works best for us. Until then we are going to catch more sunsets on the gorgeous Rappahannock River.