You can’t imagine how much of your life must be considered to get to the point of an actual plan to condense it into a smaller space. Thinking about moving from a home with a lot of space and things, to a home with less than half that space means sacrifice and getting rid of your precious things. Things that take up a great amount of space in your home and also within your psyche and entwined in identity.
I used to only own things out of necessity and then all of a sudden that changed. I can remember the moment it happened in May 1998, when my mom died in a tragic car accident and she left me a wonderful gift; her home and everything she loved in it. That gift became my own beautiful, difficult, comfortable, complex, sad, and wonderful home and burden.
I was living in Minneapolis, I was 33, in a spacious apartment with my girlfriend, and together we owned four rooms of things and three cats. I was thinking about buying a home there. I loved the rhythm of that city… it was poetry to my senses.
That’s when life took a horrible, unsettling turn, one that in the end was probably a blessing in disguise. It seems fitting to write this in honor of my mother, her hard work, the gifts she gave me, and the need to revise one’s life. The 20th anniversary of her death looms over me while I sit in my comfortable yet smaller condominium that I bought last year.
I was dragged into a world of amazing HOME OWNERSHIP and all its joyous responsibility and a deep well of grief, both of which I had never experienced before. In this grief I couldn’t comprehend selling the only home that our mom, a working, single mother actually bought on her own. I had great respect for her hard work, sacrifice, and her love of this beautiful home, one that she took from rags to riches. She was a budget decorator but her home looked as if it should be in Home & Garden magazine. Ironically, it was sad and comforting, all at the same time.
For years my mom and I poured love, thousands of dollars, blood, sweat, and tears into that wonderful home, but I finally had to make a choice: Did I want to go broke and continue to need a roommate to stay afloat, or did I need to sell this home that I loved? That choice fermented for many years. Finally, I realized that getting rid of things was painful and necessary. I thought long and hard and then three years ago decided to sell it.
It was a place of family gatherings, beautiful gardens, good memories, and three floors of things. There were lots of things they all had attached meaning and symbolism, etched on my soul. On the other hand many of them sat in an attic for 19 years, a literal wasteland of forgotten memories. I became the keeper of the memories of our lives through old things, some passed down through generations. I had to come to terms with this, though: the home was big, old, and overwhelming.
I finally just said to myself, “They are just things!” This is a mantra taught to me by an old friend also gone from this earth. Bonnie used that to get perspective on big and complicated life issues; meaning that things can’t have power over you. She was right, and I began living that philosophy.
Once I could actualize that concept, I could toss things, give things away, and sell collections of things, and move on. I realized I had to stop thinking of everything as a thing that my mother struggled to build, or buy, or how hard she worked to make it happen.
I kept some things which were important, gifts, or things I just enjoyed. My revision was shedding the past and living life on my terms. It was just another lesson in life edits.
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This blog post was curated and/or edited by The Ardent Reader, Esther Hofknecht Curtis, BSOL, MSM-HCA. The views expressed in this blog post are those of the guest blogger. Visit www.parrotcontent.com for more information.
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