Downsizing

The move we’re making from Kamloops to Moose Jaw brings with it a downsizing the likes of which we’ve never done before. Oh sure, with every move Gerry and I have made over the past 23 years of our married life, there’s been sorting and culling of things, but there has also been an underlying current of the need to hold on to treasures and memories. It’s different this time.

It’s become relatively easy for me to let go of many things I wouldn’t have dreamed of saying goodbye to in the past. I think the horrific fire season of 2021 and the thought we put into what we’d take with us if we needed to evacuate—and the precious few things we did take with us when we needed to evacuate—has made letting go all that easier. That, and my age, and the realization that my needs are far less than my wants and that one day someone is going to have to deal with all that I’ve accumulated over the past 63 years and it might as well be me. As things are cleared out, I feel a lightness and freedom I didn’t expect but that doesn’t surprise me.

Now, as I write this, Gerry is downstairs in my woman cave with a gentleman who is buying my vintage stove. My woman cave in our new home in Moose Jaw will be smaller than the room I have here. I’ve already sold the three custom-built bookshelves we had made when we moved to Washington state that lined one of the walls in there, and the books that once filled them have been carefully and ruthlessly curated to a precious few I’m taking with me. Gone too, are Gerry’s big desk and bookshelf and so he has taken one of my smaller desks for his office.

With the stove gone, all I’ll have left for my Saskatchewan sanctuary is my writing desk, an art table, and a little electric stove (the jury’s still out on whether it’s going to make the trek to Saskatchewan). Once we get there I’ll buy a small shelf for the books I’ve chosen to keep and one of the wing chairs currently in our living room will find a home in my new woman cave for early morning reading (the other will be in Gerry’s man cave). When I think ahead to a smaller, simpler, and minimalistic woman cave I expect to have in Moose Jaw, I feel nothing but peace.

It amuses me that we spend so much of our life accumulating and, one day, when we realize we have more than enough, we shift into downsizing or—as we used to say in the corporate world—right sizing (I hated that term then; it makes perfect sense now). As things large and small have left this house over the past month or so via garage sale, online sale, or as a gift for someone, I sense a lightening. It’s good, this season of letting go and moving forward. I’m so looking forward to the next phase.