When Megan and I were first married we had a monthly income of $1,500 which we lived on while waiting on a visa to move to the states that was supposed to be imminent. It wasn’t, so we ended up subletting apartments for a few weeks or a few months at a time. Oh ya, and Megan got pregnant one month in.
At one point we ended up living with friends for three months before the people trying to hire me finally told me that the VISA application was taking too long, and I should move on with my life.
We had no house, I had no full-time job and Megan was 7 months pregnant. Through a bunch of crazy random happenstances (or more likely providence) we ended up with an amazing townhouse, I got a good job, and within two months we had a baby. But we had not much. Writing the cheque for first and last month’s rent was literally all the money we had. So we weren’t exactly living “elevated on the swine” that next year.
*Googles.*
Ok, so the phrase is actually “high on the hog.” No idea why. Anyhow we were incredibly grateful for what we had and people were super generous to us, but we didn’t spend any money on anything we didn’t “need.” Every time we visited someone’s house who had a little Kitchenette Eliana would lose her mind in happiness playing with it.
Near the end of that year, we were with some other friends at Ikea seeing one, Megan and I were discussing whether we should tell all our relatives that if they all wanted to combine for a gift for Eliana for her upcoming birthday that would be a good idea.
A few weeks later we came back from dinner with my parents and walked into our house, and there…….was the kitchenette.
Why was this a big deal? Well….if you recall we did not HAVE that kitchenette. In fact, we still didn’t when we had left for dinner. And now it was in our house. This meant that…….SOMEBODY HAD BROKEN INTO OUR HOUSE AND REVERSED ROBBED US.
I believe this is the first time in our marriage that I uttered a mild swear in front of Megan. It turned out that our friends had contacted other friends of ours and gotten everybody to pitch in and buy us not just the kitchenette but all sorts of extras to go with it and handmade some additional items as well. Then they got a family member to swipe our spare key and knowing we would be at dinner with my parents, snuck in and set up the kitchenette.
All to say. Downsizing is hard.
But downsizing memories is harder than we thought.
I do not have room in the RV for a 55 pound digital piano. But that piano isn’t just an awesome piano. I’ve processed some of my most difficult moments in my life at those keys for over a decade.
The vintage buffet that Megan found in a storage locker and has taken across the country with her.
Badly handmade Christmas ornaments
It has been quite surprising to discover what causes us to feel emotional, and what doesn’t.
Downsizing has been broken down into three pretty distinct stages.
- Honesty
- Revelation
- “Are we doing the right thing?”
On the flip side, it has been quite the discovery to realize just how much stuff we have had for years that we not only don’t use but don’t even want. Why must one hold onto a cake decorating tool, when one does not actually enjoy cake decorating?
The first stage, HONESTY, was probably the funniest. It means going through all your rooms and closets and drawers and saying “Am I actually ever going to fix this fan?” or “Do I actually have the skills to fix this vacuum cleaner?”
Turns out the answer is not only “no”, but you also realize you replaced those items a while ago and there really was no reason to have hung onto them at all.
That part is fun, and you just laugh at yourself and throw stuff out. Then you look sheepishly on when the garbage men wonder why you are putting the maximum amount of garbage out every single week.
REVELATION comes next. That is even more eye-opening. You realize that you have accumulated all sorts of stuff that you only use once in a while or never. You have all sorts of cake-decorating tools even though you don’t actually like cake decorating. You have music books for songs you don’t enjoy singing. You just have them because they aren’t broken and somewhere along the way you heard “waste-not-want-not” and that means you can’t throw things out.
This stage is a mix of fun and embarrassing, but mostly it is freeing as you realize that the only person that actually told you that you have to hang on to this stuff is you.
We even discovered there are foods we keep all the time that we actually don’t want.
The last stage is the “Are we doing the right thing?” stage.
This is where you ask yourself that question over and over while either getting rid of something you actually can’t imagine living without OR that you can’t believe you are actually getting rid of because of the memories tied to it.
And here is the truth, in our experience you don’t really know if you ARE doing the right thing. We think we are, but we won’t know for sure for probably another year at least.
If you follow along with us then we can only promise you that we’ll be honest about this journey.
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