DOWNSIZING
A stack of cardboard boxes awaits the removal van
I’m moving home, after years in a spacious apartment in Auckland.
When planning packing and moving, I took stock of my furniture and other assets — curtains, blankets, linen, crockery, glassware and cutlery, kitchen utensils, electric bike, my guitar, paintings, and over 100 books, TVs, a radio, craft materials, not to mention my car, garden tools and equipment; the list goes on.
So much was accumulated over the seventeen years I’ve been in New Zealand.
I must ‘downsize’. Do I need all this stuff?
Checking removal costs
Analysis provided unexpected insights. Shipping or freight — if I moved to another town, or another country — cost more than buying new furniture and staples.
Chatting with friends
When discussing the move with friends and family, the answer was the same. Downsizing takes a time, at least a year, to do it thoroughly and with least bother on moving.
I had two months.
Progress
The first month I still worked full time, so progress was minimal — only packing in the evenings. During the second month, I really focused on moving house. I had what I thought was an effective plan; it turned out it would take a lot of back-tracking and switches to achieve everything — and even then I didn’t complete all the tasks in good time, resulting in rushing at the end.
The biggest tasks
Packing was the biggest job, then arranging removal, storage unit hire, confirming next accommodation, all had to be done well in advance. Then closing services — electricity, water, Wi-fi, and so on — cleaning the house, tidying the garden, checking all was done before leaving. Finally, notifying all services who needed to know my new address — bank, tax department, etc.
Packing
The packing plan required three rows of cardboard boxes, varying in size and strength, depending on the intended content.
One row for the ‘Must Keep’ items.
One row for the ‘Maybe’ items.
One row for the ‘Must go’ items.
An extra row — for items still useful, still loved, but unused for over two years — was needed; ideal for the Maybe row but close to being Must Keeps — for emotional attachment, attractiveness, or potential future usefulness.
With four rows of cartons filling the space between sofas in the lounge room, moving about became difficult.
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Where to start?
I decided to start with the least full room — my office. I was mistaken. The desk, the PC, printers and other attachments, boxes of filed documents, books on business management, art and creative writing, university and other study programs, monthly magazines on travel, history, art and literary journals — carried me through many years; the stack of new stationery. What to do with all of this?
Priorities
Books had priority for a while, documents were filtered for current relevance, and magazines filled a large carton which would not budge.
The cumulative weight of paper was greater than anticipated. The pile filled three large black plastic sacks, each requiring the wheelbarrow to safely shunt to the recycling bin.
Then the bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and finally the sofa room.
The first to go
The remaining row of Must Keep boxes was unexpectedly long. Both the Must Go and Maybe rows, without review, went. More was disposed of than kept; a flurry of online trades, second-hand-furniture dealers viewing, adding up, offering next to nothing; visits to the local op-shop; more visits to the local recycling station.
What must stay
There’s still much to clear — like books ‘I can’t (or don’t want to) do without’, stacked paintboxes, half-finished canvases, garden equipment, craft fabrics and tools.
The new premises
I’ve yet to adjust to the squeeze in my new home.
Should there be a law about accumulating, well, ‘things’?
The well-meaning advice that ‘effective downsizing starts twelve months prior’ applies when down-sizing day is forecast and known a year in advance — which isn’t always possible.
And who wants to do without accumulated (once necessary) things?
Decisions
So, it’s been a rush, a time of snap decisions, many of them wrong, and some long-overdue right decisions; then of watching treasured items whisked away in the ‘never-to-be-seen-again’ basket — to the local tip, second-hand dealers, various op-shops, and to friends (all of whom seem genuinely delighted).
The big move
Then the big move. The removal van arrived as organized two weeks beforehand, and my things were shifted very quickly into the van. Stuff that required storage was delivered first
Move done
Days pass. I’m flummoxed. The electric toothbrush is missing — is it lost forever among cast-away things? My reading glasses and bedside radio-clock have turned up — in a box of kitchen crockery — as have a pair of slippers with the bathroom scale, some hours after a shopping spree to replace them.
But it’s a new start — free of most of the clutter.
I miss it already.
