How do you Downsize a Life?
A collection of some of the items we’ve recently sold
When we first decided we wanted to go on this grand adventure and move our life to Maui, we thought we had a realistic plan in place. Pack our stuff, sell the house, drive across the country, hop on a plane to Maui, move into our rental, live the dream. This is obviously a basic sketch of the process. We know there is more nuance than this, but we thought we generally had a solid plan. We’ve realized as we move through this process though, some things we originally thought made sense aren’t actually that realistic.
The biggest shift we have had to make is our mindset around our belongings. At first we thought we would downsize a good portion of our belongings, like selling our big furniture pieces and paring down our wardrobes to swimsuits and board shorts. We know we can probably rent a place with a washer and dryer and we probably don’t really need our panini press. Everything else we would we would use on a daily basis would get packed into a 20 foot storage container and shipped across the country and then across the Pacific. But as we’ve started downsizing our belongings, two things have occurred to us - renting a storage container to move your belongings from the East coast continental U.S. to Maui is EXPENSIVE - and do we really need that casserole dish, or would it be more cost-effective to just buy a new one when we get there? Probably the latter.
With that in mind, the current plan (which is subject to change with everything else in this process) is to downsize the vast majority of our life and plan to bring only what we can pack into suitcases or what can be shipped in a relatively small box before we move - like our blender. We really like our blender and plan to drink a lot of smoothies on Maui. Everything else will be sold, packed into a storage unit here on the mainland, or left with our families.
But how do you downsize a life? We have been building this life together for the past 16 years. The majority of those years we have been living together. We have dishes and books and camping gear and a lawnmower and gym equipment and heated cat beds. Right before we left on our trip to Maui, we were strongly considering selling our current house and buying a bigger house with more acreage. Our realtor came by one evening to get an idea of what our house could sell for in the current market and the first thing she said after the tour was, “You guys have definitely outgrown this house.” She wasn’t wrong. At the time our minds went to, “Well of course we have! And let’s find a bigger space to put all of this stuff!”. But as we have been working through the process of downsizing and saying goodbye to our belongings, we are realizing that we don’t need much to be happy. It seems we are both realizing that the happiest we are is when we are enjoying the company of eachother and our dog and two cats. We don’t need 90% of the items in our house to be happy and live a full life. I’ve been reflecting lately on the people I know who have been shouting the idea of living a life with few belongings and more adventures. That’s the life we want to live. That’s the plan moving forward.
As I mentioned in my last post, saying goodbye to things is not easy though. It has been an interesting exercise. The emotions and feelings we attach to material things is sometimes surprising. As we’ve been collecting our first round of yard sale items, I’ve been reflecting on the memories attached to them. The juicer we bought the year after we got married that we used regularly for one summer and never again. The Galileo thermometer Matt bought me for Christmas years ago because he knows I love colorful, nerdy science decor. My complete Fraggle Rock DVD set that I think I watched once (we don’t even own a DVD player anymore). All of these items have a memory and emotions attached to them. It’s sometimes hard to let go of them, but I keep reminding myself and my husband that they brought us joy once upon a time, they served a purpose for us, and now saying goodbye is serving an even greater purpose. We are going to live our dream of adventure. So we’ll keep saying goodbye and thanking them for their time with us and hope they bring others the joy they brought us.
Have you downsize your life like this before? What are your non-negotiable “keep” items?
