Chuck or Keep: The Ups and Downs of Downsizing

“We all know how this goes,” said a character in a recent television series, “House, Bungalow, Care Home, Hospice, Grave.”

Those at the first transition stage in this sequence find the latter stages lurking at the edge of their consciousness. Time’s arrow has passed the peak of its arc and is starting its descent. This adds an emotional layer to the business of moving house, which is famously the second most stressful life event after bereavement (divorcées may beg to differ).

And there is the matter of all that stuff. Artefacts, many neither useful nor beautiful, accumulated over years of family life: fishing rods, hockey sticks, guitars, LPs, CDs, photograph albums, drawers full of wires that charged devices we can no longer locate.

And the books. Hundreds of the bloody things. Did I read them all? Why can’t I remember any of them? The realisation that there isn’t the time to read them all again, or any point in doing so.

So we come to the trendy Swedish Death Cleaning: minimalism and decluttering for pensioners. There is, of course, an app for the digital junk but the issues with which one’s heirs will have to grapple are mainly physical. It’s an emotional process, deciding which remnants of a life are going to be of continuing value to oneself, or others, and which can go to the charity shop. There is a security in being surrounded by stuff, having spent life up to that point accumulating it. What is needed is a minimalist partner to convince you that you won’t actually miss any of it once it’s gone. It’s the confronting of it all in the process of decluttering which is the problem.

Perhaps it is best to embrace liberation from the responsibility of being a custodian. Shall I make a start? Perhaps after a cup of coffee…

                                                                                           Michael Clarke