Developing New Life Perspectives
Lessons learned from a garage sale,
a friend’s perspective on downsizing,
an unusual “purge and reorganize”
experience, and more.
Have you noticed how your perspective on life has changed with the passing years? Researchers tell us that aging and all that comes with it will change how we see the world, but I still see my life as an adventure waiting to happen. Of course, my deep Christian faith has everything to do with my positive outlook on life.
Lessons Learned from a Garage Sale
I started planning a big downsizing garage sale on July 4th when I had time to reflect on all the stuff in my life that was weighing me down. Everywhere in my house, I saw things I no longer used or wanted because my life’s interests and habits had changed. I had a big garage sale after Harry died, but my goal for this last time around was to get everything I no longer had a use for out of my life, one way or the other.
Talk about gaining a new life perspective! I quickly learned that planning a major project at my age is a lot easier than making it happen. Everything now takes me twice as long to do as it did ten years ago. And I didn’t anticipate the “mystery illness” in late July that would force me to move the garage sale from August to September.
By then, I’d figured out how to turn the whole garage into a temporary shop with board shelving on three walls and sale items hung over them on studs and spaces in between. Everything normally visible was moved into one corner, under the large workbench, or somewhere else.
Most of what I wanted to get rid of was on the lower level of my home. My garage sale buddy brought up all the heavy stuff and helped me set up display areas before my sister Mary came from California the first of August to lend a hand. Her help was invaluable. For more than two weeks we worked together in two three-hour shifts a day gathering from every area of my home hundreds of individual items I hadn’t used or needed in years. Without hurting our backs or arms, we devised clever ways to move lightweight bags, boxes, and individual items up the seven steps to the entryway and then down the two steps into the garage. Talk about teamwork! Our mutual sense of humor helped to make this work fun.
Mary organized a couple hundred books on a bookshelf and then cleaned and set up all the kitchenware items before she left. I gradually got everything else done over the next month, often working 12 hours a day to do regular work and garage sale stuff too. Cooking and housework fell by the wayside and I slept fitfully, often waking in the middle of the night to make notes about more things I had to do before I’d be ready to open the door that first day. Two days before the sale I was still adding prices to items, making signs for the walls, and gathering a few more vinyl LPs and CDS from Harry's collection to add to those already displayed on the workbench waiting for buyers.
As I write this, I’m still in tear-down mode and gradually getting rid of everything that didn’t sell. Next month I’ll tell you how I did this in case you’re downsizing too. I’ll also share some garage sale stories. During the four days of interacting with shoppers, I learned much about people’s changing interests, attitudes, and habits. I’ve concluded that the pandemic forced all of us to develop new perspectives on life, work, and how we want to spend our time in these uncertain days.
A Friend's Perspective on Downsizing
After sharing my garage sale plans with Glen, my high school chum in Texas, he wrote: “I tip my hat to you for the effort and the courage it takes to downsize. You have motivated me, but privately I question my courage to start the process again. We went through ‘Downsizing One’ when we left California in 2018. I thought I had a great plan laid out. It was to be a three-month effort, a leisurely thing. I would advertise shop equipment and tools on Craigslist, certain books to the local library, woodworking magazines and other things to Habitat for Humanity. Donate to the family only to find their interest is in other directions. When the final week comes, you start looking for transportation to the local landfill and catching your breath in short pants and gulps. Now we realize we brought way too much with us and need to start on ‘Downsizing Two.’”
An Unusual “Purge and Reorganize” Experience
Sometimes we are pushed into taking action. Sister Mollie and her husband in California were forced to “purge and reorganize” their garage when the door buckled one day and wouldn’t close. While they waited for the company to come and force it closed, they had to move two 4 ft. x 6 ft. storage units away from the door. That meant taking everything out of the shelves and moving many items inside the house or to a storage shed in the backyard.
“Things in the storage shelves weren’t well organized to begin with,” Mollie said. “After the door was fixed and we could get back to normal, it seemed like the perfect time to look twice at everything we’d been keeping in the garage, so we went through the other storage units and found many things on those shelves we no longer needed or would ever use again.”
Twice a year, their city accepts up to three cubic yards of “stuff,” so what began as a tedious repair job became an opportunity to do something productive and satisfying. Certainly, satisfaction is what I feel now that I’m in the home stretch of completing a massive project that included some surprising blessings and benefits to me and others.
How about you? Are you ready to downsize or purge and reorganize your stuff, try to sell it, give it away, or just dump it and be done with it?
“Being honest with ourselves about the reasons we hold onto our stuff will give us a new perspective and the will to let it go.” - The Unclutter Angel
Focus on What Matters
I still have many dreams and goals, am still acquiring new technology skills, developing new friendships, and embracing everything about life that is positive and uplifting, which means I don’t watch much news these days. I liked Ingrid Bergman’s take on this topic:
“Getting old is like climbing a mountain; you get a little out of breath, but the view is much better!” (The fifth wife of Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, Ingrid died of cancer at 65.)
In my younger years, I wrote to make a living. Today, all I want to do is write about LIFE in direct response to the call of my heart, with money being a sideline blessing. I hope that the services I offer will help and encourage other writers to publish what they write. I relate strongly to this quote from a favorite blogger:
“Life's not all about money. It's about doing what you were born to do, what you feel called to do. It's about people—about shaping and changing them and giving them pleasure and forcing them to think.” – John Matthew Fox, Bookfox
First published as a Brabec Bulletin on October 11, 2023.
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