Footloose and fancy free!

It’s been 12 days since my house closed and I left for California with a couple of suitcases and a bunch of holiday stuff tossed into the back of my minivan.
The family that bought the house emailed that they’re thrilled with their new home – especially to be moved in in time to enjoy Christmas [...]

No distractions = FOCUS!

One of my biggest goals in this downsize maneuver was to re-center myself, to stop feeling so pulled by external responsibilities and the demands of maintaining a big house and garden.
It’s in my yankee nature to be a Responsible Person. But I was responsible for so much that my attention span was more suited to [...]

On schlepping stuff.

So… all that stuff I threw into the back of my Toyota minivan just before I left town Friday?

2 carry-on size suitcases
3 boxes of important stuff I couldn’t live without for two months
3 boxes of essential stuff required for our traditional family Christmas
1 box of emergency stuff for winter driving over the Siskiyou summit
2 boxes [...]

Thank god for ex-husbands who are still friends

My ex has been feeling more anxious about my move than I am, so to calm himself he offered to help oversee yesterday’s Big Move. Stuffing my Stuff into Storage. Squeezing Drusilla’s foot into Cinderella’s tiny glass slipper.
My storage place offers a 16’ truck for such occasions ($20), and my plan was to pick it [...]

Downsizing my closet, with help.

My well-dressed and ruthlessly honest friend Judi came over this morning to help me tackle that which I’ve been unable to tackle alone… my closet.

I thought I’d done so well this summer when I filled two large bags for Goodwill. But when I thought about squeezing my clothes into a couple of suitcases and a [...]

My daughter, my angel

I don’t know how anyone downsizes out of the big family home alone. The job is immense and takes five times longer than you could possibly imagine.
My daughter has been here for four days – left her usual job as Household Administrator and Sanitation Engineer in Oakland, California so she could perform a ramped-up version [...]

Sold one more thing

Baby steps, I tell myself, baby steps.  I posted the cart on Craigslist and probably should have priced it higher because eight people responded excitedly in short order. But the cart has  lived outside for fifteen years and my son had scoffed at its saleability. “Who would want that old thing??? You should pay someone [...]

I’m jealous.

My25-year-old son mooched off his kindly old mum from October thru May, stashing away heaps of money from his job – like so many autumn leaves in  giant trash bags.
And then poof! He took off for Wylie’s Excellent Global Adventure – to travel in distant lands till his money runs out, or I yank on [...]

“The Joy of Less” – Pico Iyer’s simple life

Today’s essayist in the NY Times series on “happiness” is Pico Iyer. He calls it “the joy of less…”   which would have been an excellent title for this blog given that my name is Joy. Unfortunately I’m only GETTING to less.  BEING at less is still just an aspiration.
Iyer’s parents are Indian, but he was [...]

How much is my time worth to sell this stuff??

I have listed a bunch of things on-line, which means I had to describe the thing in enticing terms, photograph it, figure out how much to ask for it, and go through the posting hoops.  Time-consuming. Nibbles on most of the stuff not happening.
I also made a trip over to Powells Books in Portland this [...]