How does it feel to get rid of all your stuff?

Our inquiring friends want to know. It feels different than I expected -- both good and bad. As each item goes to donation, sale, storage or discard, my first reaction is a sense of relief. One less thing to clean, carry, pack, move, maintain, insure, worry about. Then, after a beat, I feel a sense of loss. Each item has its own attached memory which makes it hard. My sister gave me that cake plate. We bought that lamp for our first home. The kids used to play with those board games. It's also tiring. We moved 20,000 pounds of stuff 4 times in the past 3 1/2 years. I am really really, really happy to not be packing 20,000 pounds of stuff ever again.

Clothes.  Why oh why did I have so many clothes? I think my clothes represented comfort and security to me. It has always been to hard to find clothes that fit my six foot frame properly. When I do find an item I like, I'm willing to spend more money, and I keep it forever. Well, until now.

Shopping. I never used to like shopping. Now, I have an aversion to it. We don't need any more stuff. We are looking forward to a simpler life - with less stuff. We will have just enough clothes, dishes, tools and hobby items to live comfortably in a 38' fifth wheel -- and not one thing more.

Money. This thought struck me during our down-sizing: we have spent a huge amount of money over the decades on all of this stuff. I think of our down-sizing as 'reverse money laundering'. We bought all this stuff brand new at full retail prices, and now we're turning it back into cash -- at garage sale prices.

Surprise. Overall, its surprising how easy it is to make the decision to donate, sell or discard each item. It's surprising how happy I am to see it all go. In hindsight, I remember how proud I was to own all of this stuff.

Selling Stuff.  We sold a few individual items on craigslist, and then hosted our first garage sale. I thought a series of 3 garage sales would be sufficient to clear out the house.  Even though we had a steady stream of people at our garage sale (2 days), it quickly became apparent that 3 garage sales weren't going to get the job done.  So, we hired a local estate sale company to come in, organize all of our stuff, price it and sell it. Ron and Deb (and their crew) worked their tails off. They spent 4 weeks setting up the sale, putting tables in every room and displaying all of our priced items. They then advertised the sale -- and sent an email to their 950 followers. The first day at 8 am, there was a hoard of people waiting to get in -- with parked cars lining our street for as far as the eye can see.  By the end of the second day, the house, basement and garage were empty!

Insanity.  Buying your own stuff back at your estate sale. Sad, but true. Two days before our estate sale started, I had second thoughts. What if my kids wanted some of the stuff we were getting rid of?  So, I sent them an email with a link to the estate sale website which had photos of nearly everything in the sale. To my amazement, my older son and his wife did want a few items.  So, we went to the estate sale and bought some of our own stuff back (per the estate sale contract).  Crazy. 

Double Insanity. The afternoon of the second day of the estate sale, Ron called and asked if we wanted to see what was left before it was donated. You guessed it. We not only drove back to the house, we picked out a few items and took them home to Betty.

- Amanda