Downsizing

S

Son_of_Perdition

Senior Member
Downsize is a recent example of a euphemism that found broad acceptance in the language and is not particularly thought of as a deceptive attempt to smooth over the pain of large-scale firings or in my case a 'forced' early retirement. The search for less harmful terms goes on and on. The attempt to find even more positive-sounding ways to say 'downsize' has led business executives and people working in human resources and public relations (both euphemisms themselves) to float a number of alternatives. Companies were being 'reengineered' and even 'right-sized'; laid-off workers had to be 'separated' or 'unassigned' for being 'nonessential'; their jobs were said to be 'no longer going forward.' Most of these terms were met with scorn, being regarded as cynical attempts to sugarcoat an inherently distressing phenomenon, and as failed euphemisms they accomplished the exact opposite of what they were designed to.

Our 'downsizing' meant working within the framework of a fixed income and identifying the real needs to remain independent. We sold our home below a market analysis done in 2007. We managed to get out from under a higher although sustainable mortgage with a little dignity and cash. The home was not large by today's standards but was more home and yard than we needed. We had also decided to move to a more hospitable climate. Part of marketing the home was a period of yard sales, decluttering, upgrading and obtaining storage.

After closing we set off with our little trailer and basic necessities to our newly adopted state. We came back 2 months later after purchasing a downsized home and again decided to declutter our lives of more 'stuff' we had stored. Leaving with our little trailer after emptying 2 storage bays we arrived back 'home' with less than one tenth of the items we had before our adventure. It was apparent to us, no one needs that much 'stuff' we both agreed to limit our purchases in the future to fewer luxuries and unnecessary items to survive and enjoy our new lifestyle.
 
Downsizing is one way of finding all the 'stuff' you accumulate over the years. I had a good clean out not so long ago.
 
Fern said:
Downsizing is one way of finding all the 'stuff' you accumulate over the years. I had a good clean out not so long ago.
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I agree Fern. I did the same last year, and so glad I did. You think you will miss the stuff, but you don't! :)
 
Back in 1990, the company that I worked for decided it was time to "rightsize". They were unloading the bloated employee rolls, and I got to be one of them. The deal was that those of us who were being rightsized were supposed to put our employee numbers in the computer and it would spit out the location of our next assignment. No employee number entered, no job. Well. My mama didn't raise no dumb kids! If we hadn't been assigned a new job by the time ours went away, we were retired. With benefits. And paid a month's salary for every year worked. I didn't enter my employee number in the computer:D

None of the rightsized employees were management so what the company ended up with were lots of managers with nobody to manage. The next round of rightsizing took care of that.
 
I have been downsizing for the last 3 years, giving stuff to my kids and selling some things. After my dad and stepmother died, my brother and I worked very hard for weeks cleaning out 70 years of clutter, I don't intend for my kids to have to do that.

The only thing that I have missed is my husband's pickup.
 
We've downsized quite a bit! My wife was really a kind of "pack rat" and admitted that. When I met her, I had no furniture b/c I rented furnished rooms in homes. Basically, all I had was my clothes and just a few other things. She had a 10' x 10' storage spot full of stuff. So much stuff, I could barely raised up the door! That was then and now, 14 years later, after garage sales, Goodwill and Salvation Army donations and Craigslist sales, we have downsized a whole lot.......and still doing it, at times.
 
Butterfly, what struck me after we unloaded years and years of "stuff" was how freeing it was. I haven't ever, not once, missed any of the stuff. The conventional wisdom that tell us stuff is just stuff? It's absolutely spot on!
 
That's what we are doing. We have put our country house up for sale.. and slowly bringing back everything from there to our home in the city.. and donating most of it to charity. I have no time or desire to do a garage sale. I'd rather donate things and take the tax credit.
 
The main thing to remember with downsizing is furniture.

Over here many houses have large pieces of furniture and super King size beds.

If you can afford it it is often easier to purchase appropriate size (smaller) furniture that will maximise the available space in your new dwelling.

It is a nightmare for some people as relatives often do not require extra furniture etc. Selling it or giving it away also has problems.

If you want to donate stuff to a charity it has to have a 'Fire Regulation Label' attached otherwise they will not accept it.

Some people end up paying the local authority to remove items to the Tip for disposal.

.
 
I almost wish I could live in some little travel trailer and move around. With the cats, it wouldn't be appropriate. They need a certain amount of room and they will never be downsized. :) Plus I'm less than handy.

I too though, feel the need for less and less. I think back when I had a two bedroom house. I didn't need every room filled with stuff for just one person. I got rid of a lot when I sold it. I could probably get rid of more. I guess though, that we all need some kind of roof over hour heads.
 
I've always been pretty good at getting rid of stuff but I always bought more. Then I reached a certain age and realized that all that stuff was just more for me to dust around so I quit buying (retails worst nightmare, the 'looked-loo shopper'). And lately I've become addicted to standing in the middle of my garage or barn and perusing the labels on all the boxes while musing about what I can get rid of! Eventually I hope to be able to stand there and see empty shelves.
 
I "inherited" all my mom's antique furniture years ago when she retired to the beach house. So I have dragged them around to three different houses. I wanted dreadfully to get rid of them but nobody else in the family wanted them and I was afraid she'd be upset if I jettisoned them. Finally, when I sold my house and moved in with my boyfriend (who had absolutely no room for them), I just broke down and asked Mom if I could get rid of the stuff (including a huge 125 year old pump organ). She said, "Sure, I don't care what you do with them." What a relief that was. Wish I had asked her years ago.
 
I'm in the process of throwing away stuff too, but not furniture. Not if it's solid wood. I'd rather throw away the new stuff first. I still sleep in the first full bed from the house I grew up in, about 60 years ago. Thinking of stripping it and staining it darker to match the bedroom floors. Of course if I get too much furniture some will have to be swapped out. But my parents already gave me all their old furniture, so I'm not expecting any more.
 
I haven't started downsizing, I'm still accumulating. With 25 acres, a work shop and several outbuilding full of tools and equipment, I need to start cutting back. I think I'll do like the lady we bought this house from. She had pretty much the same situation with so much in the house and all the buildings. When we bought the place she took her favorite chair and her dog. She left everything else for us.
 
Now that I've been retired 4 years and we started our downsizing, I have a problem. My wife is awesome with her yard flowers, planter boxes and not a weed in sight but she has this fixation with chairs. She changes or is always bringing home a new chair whether it's indoor or outdoor construction. I pointed out that there's just the two of us and with our love seat, 2 outdoor swings she now has enough seating for 25 people, I use 2 chairs.

Our lot is small and we are allowed one 10X10 shed for storage, but her argument is we have enough seating for all our immediate family to come visiting at once. She has turned my man-cave shed into chair storage nightmare. She saves nothing else (which means anything of mine is fair game). Keeps our home immaculate except for those ever present chairs, also chairs do not do well in a stacking/storage scheme.
 
We've been downsizing every move we've made, 4 times in 13 years. We're now in a condo in an "over 55 community" and have it down to what we need. We gave our kids first pick on what we no longer wanted and donated the rest to local charities and gave a lot away through Craigslist. We're at the point we want to be with our condo and a small travel trailer.

We got rid of anything we hadn't used in the previous year on our final move. The trailer provides an easy and comparatively cheap way to travel though a recent nasty hail storm may have destroyed our trailer. I've patched it up and we'll give it another trip and decide if we have to replace it or not.

It's nice not to have excess stuff taking up space!
 
I began "downsizing" many years ago as part of my conversion to minimalism.

What was interesting was what happened on the day I decided I had become "small" enough - when I had sold / given away all the detritus of 30+ years of being a collector.

I turned my downsizing inward.

As Arthur Conan Doyle's great detective Sherlock Holmes once told Watson,

[h=1]“I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.

Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent.

Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”
[/h]
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Source: A Study in Scarlet

So I decided it was time to clean out my mental attic.

I began severing relationships that no longer produced happiness; I gave up my ideas of glory; I threw out my fears and doubts. I gave away the thought that I had to live my life for anyone but myself.

I will say this: it was a lot easier giving away the material stuff. :rolleyes:
 
WOW! 25 acres. Do you have to mow all of that? I hope not. Is it like a small farm?
 
Different in Australia.. not called condos but small cabins or units.. I think? we did that we had a large home and 5 kids who left one by one.. now there is just the two of us so we sold our home and moved into a relocatable, we have a small cottage.. garden all around and 2 bedrooms which is ample for us.. but we travelled for over 10 yrs and now we are home bodies.. don`t have any ambition to travel any more. seen all I want to see.. but I have too much furniture I can`t part with mum`s chair and ggrands lamp.. sons table and chairs.. things like this .. all have special meanings as the ones who it belonged to have since passed on.. our son died at 45 yrs of age so we inherited his furniture and still use a lot of it..and I wish I was like some of you as little furniture as possible but I can`t do it lol.. :)
 
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