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    The Upside of Downsizing
    The Upside of Downsizing
    The Upside of Downsizing
    Ebook133 pages1 hour

    The Upside of Downsizing

    By Vanessa Goodwyn

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    About this ebook

    The Upside of Downsizing is a humorous look at the challenges and opportunities to be found in letting go of some of our material things. With personal insights, illustrations and photos, Vanessa Goodwyn shares her journey from a large home to a smaller abode, and how she and her husband disposed of a small mountain of "stuff" in the process.

    TUOD offers useful tips, practical ideas and pointers that can be helpful to anyone interested in adopting the "Less is More" philosophy: retirees, widows and widowers, blended families and others hungry to declutter and downsize. At the end of each chapter, a workbook-style "Your Turn" section challenges the reader to apply the lessons to their own situation -- or at least jot down some notes while ideas are fresh.

    Vanessa's light-hearted style makes the journey enjoyable and you just might come away from this easy read with a some fresh ideas for lightening your own load.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateDec 9, 2021
    ISBN9781667820071
    The Upside of Downsizing

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      Book preview

      The Upside of Downsizing - Vanessa Goodwyn

      CHAPTER ONE –

      IS IT TIME FOR

      A CHANGE?

      If you have picked up this book, there is a good chance that you and I have a lot in common.

      - While I am still in the workforce, it’s been ages since I could be called The Kid at the office. Rather, since I am from Texas, the youngsters at the office call me Ma’am.

      - I have grandkids – all boys -- and recently we noticed with pride (theirs) and a little nostalgic sigh (mine) that they have each passed me up in height AND just about every other measurable category.

      - About six years ago I quit fighting the monthly battle of coloring my greying hair, and for the most part I’m officially a Silver Lady now. That sounds better than white headed, grey-haired, or (Heaven forbid), a Blue Hair. I’m trying to embrace the change, reminding myself that silver implies a touch of class and a little more value than my old brown locks – though admittedly I wouldn’t mind having the thickness that my plain ol’ brown used to have.

      - I can boast that I still wear the same shoe size that I did when I married, but everything else has crept up several sizes over the years. Awhile back I even had my wedding ring cut off so it could be resized. I hadn’t been able to get it off in at least twenty years…

      To sum up: I’m … hmmm… of a Certain Age. There, I said it. Got some good years ahead of me, I hope, but not a pup by any stretch of the imagination. And when I imagine the reader who is interested in the topic of downsizing, I first imagine someone like myself.

      There are certainly other folks in other stages of life, other age brackets, other demographics who may be seeking to find the positives in owning less -- and the reciprocal of that fact -- being responsible for less. I also welcome these readers and hope that my research turns up some tips that fit your situation and match your goals for downsizing. So, let’s journey on together.

      There are aspects of my life that fall outside of the average and I should probably mention a few things, just to give you an idea where I’m coming from. (Yes, I know that’s grammatically incorrect, but I’m a Texan and it’s deeply bred in us to end sentences with prepositions.) I still have both my parents living and in pretty good health. I married young – at barely 18 – and the husband of my youth is still the man at my side, forty-eight years later. We enjoy a good relationship with our adult children.

      For most of those years we did what I imagine most other Americans have been doing for decades. We grew our family. In our case, a son came first, then a daughter, and later a host of foster children, some of whom became permanent family members. Then over a dozen international exchange students shared our home, each for a year. We also briefly hosted a neighbor, a nephew, and a couple of college students interning in our area.

      With each addition to our family, we were also expanding our cache of stuff. Our first apartment with four rooms was more than sufficient for our possessions, but in the ensuing years we needed additional bedrooms and more floor space for our ever-growing clan. And closets for their clothes. And yards for them to play in. And garages, which we filled with the stuff needed to keep the yards, as well as bikes and sports equipment and tools to fix the things that inevitably got broken. I fancied myself a photographer of sorts, and lined the halls with photos and filled closets with albums. I decorated the house for every holiday, and the attic was filled with storage boxes: red lids for Christmas; purple for Easter; and green for Halloween. Icy-blue-lidded boxes held bulky ski clothes in every size. (See what I did there? Yep. I’m a color-coder.) When the foster kids came along, and later the grandsons, I could pull out boxes full of Barbies, Hot Wheels and Legos that I had wisely held onto. And the storybooks my children had loved were still on our shelves, handy to be shared with a new generation.

      The last twenty years had been at a wonderful rural acreage in East Texas with a pond, pastureland and woods. We took a stab at raising livestock including ostriches, then miniature donkeys, and a few horses. Eventually we had added an in-ground pool which was a hit with friends and neighbors, since there was no public pool in our nearest town and the Texas summers are brutally hot. (Believe me, I do not choose that adjective casually. Brutally hot, meaning it usually hits the century mark in mid-July and stays there throughout most of August.) Our home was a casual, kid-friendly place, perfect for a big family. We used every inch of it and made wonderful memories there.

      In the last few years, though, things had changed. We found ourselves in -- for lack of a better term – a new Season of Life. Happily, our grown children were off on their own and doing their thang. We no longer were keeping foster kids or exchange students. The grandsons’ visits were fewer and shorter as their social lives – summer camps and youth group activities and little league ball and girlfriends – took priorities over visits to their grandparents’ house. We recognized that this was all as it should be, so rather than having them come to us, we found ourselves burning up the roads to go watch their games and meets and races. And we loved it!

      Still, though, we had one big multi-faceted responsibility: our large house with its double garage and huge yard to keep and acres to mow and critters to feed and pool to keep. It was a lot of work, and the work load was no longer shared by a houseful of strong teenagers who could help out with the yard work or feeding the livestock. No one was swimming, but the pool still needed faithful tending and expensive chemicals. Slowly but surely, as our li’l chicks flew the coop, the home we loved no longer was a fit for us. It was like a huge, needy, dependent child. If we wanted to take a trip, we had to get a sitter to feed the animals and water the plants and keep the pool. If we wanted to go watch a swim meet, it meant we would have to double up on the mowing the next day. Heck – if we wanted to take a nap, we had to carve out an hour in our schedule because there was always something demanding our time and energy.

      A turning point for me came during the holidays a few years ago. In early December, I opened the drop-down ladder to the attic access, climbed up, and clumsily dragged down box after box of decorations. Wrestling the huge, boxed artificial tree was a real challenge, but I managed to get it down without breaking my neck. Then, without any chubby little hands or eager international students to help, I proceeded to set up the tree and MOST of the decorations. (I had already decided not to display the miles of garland that usually draped the stair rails, nor

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