DOWNSIZING

LIFE ART WATER

DOWNSIZING

or

The art of getting rid of stuff you didn’t even know you had.

Moving to a smaller space, regardless of how comfortable and well organized(really) it is can be a painful experience. With the right mind-set it can also be an exhilarating, liberating one.

I started in my studio in March, before we even started building the Floating Empire, knowing intuitively that it would be the most difficult part of our lives to downsize. After all i had most of a bookcase and a closet full of books i had barely looked at, much less, cut into. Not to mention ......no, i’m not sure on first meeting that you really want to know what else my inner pack rat had squirreled away in the almost ten years that we had been in this particular space. I felt somewhat like the Red Queen dispensing summary justice - “OFF WITH THEIR HEADS”, while simultaneously  moaning.....Is there no pasteboard knight willing to save me....?

I’ve downsized my/our life before. Some things are easy to get rid of. Take the 120# of raw, clay that sat in my basement for ten years with out me ever sinking my fingers into its cool, wet, sensuous depths. Not a problem. Yes, i really did keep it wet. The three plus bookcases full of books, most of which had already traveled across the country twice, definitely an issue. Okay, we did get rid of some of the trade paperbacks when we left Illinois, we also sold a whole bunch of them when we owned our bookstore, but there were still way more than a rational human would want to cart around with them.

I have never had to put things into storage before. I know that this is a common issue within the tiny house movement. We all accumulate stuff that we don’t want to get rid of, but know intellectually that there really won’t be room for that ...(insert favorite piece of stuff here). I should have known that it wasn’t going to be as easy as it seemed when i devised this oh so clever two tier  packing system, which boiled down to STORAGE and TO THE BOAT, with of course endless sub-classification which determined each boxes’ position in the hierarchy of storage.

I knew that i was i trouble when in the course of moving things to their appropriate new home, boat or storage  i came across a box labeled, BOAT, seldom used baking and seasonal linens. Does this sound like a woman truly committed to downsizing?

more later

morgainne