I’m not the only writer living out of her car…

The current issue of The Atlantic Monthly has a piece by Sandra Tsing Loh, “On Being a Bad Mother,” which features a description of her “mobile home” – a paper-filled Volvo station wagon:
I am bad because after a domestic partnership of 20 years, when my kids were still elementary-school-age, I fell in love, had an [...]

Goodwill for the homeless?

I don’t need to look far in San Francisco so see what homeless looks like here. Several homeless people camp outside my son’s office in the Mission District. Matted hair, dirty face and hands, worldly possessions stuffed into a garbage bag stuffed into a shopping cart pinched from Safeway.
In the past month of radical downsizing [...]

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 [...]

Costs of selling a home mount up

Yesterday I did the deed. Or more accurately, I paid Chicago Title a queen’s ransom to do the deed. For them to guarantee that there were no liens against my property I paid more than $1,500.  I also paid the realtors (mine and the buyers’) a commission of $21,000 and (state and local excise) taxes [...]

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 [...]

Friends: indispensable during a move

Even my cat, Bama, wants to help.
Over the past week I’ve also had major packing and cleaning help from Chris, Patty, Skip and Sue. Down and dirty help, especially from Chris. She and I have cooked a half dozen charity dinners in my kitchen, so she knows her way around my house, and we work really [...]

How am I doing?

People who know how much I love this house ask me how I’m holding up under the impending sale and move (of my stuff) into a storage unit.
Surprisingly, astonishingly even, FINE. I’ve been too busy to get emotional – or something like that. It’s been a process that I’ve thought about for a few years [...]

Come ‘n’ Git It! Everything must go!

Late this afternoon about 30 friends passed through my nearly empty house for a “Come ‘n’ Git It” party.
My friend Judi and I arranged on several tables all the stuff I wanted to free myself from.  I’d invited people via email and Facebook a few days earlier, asking that they bring food or drink to [...]

The case of the McGuire furniture

There is a time and a buyer for everything: witness the McGuire furniture saga.
You may remember my humongo McGuire desk, the logjam in my early efforts to downsize during the summer. It took up an acre of physical space but was way too valuable just to chuck. Or so I thought.
I listed it several times [...]

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 [...]