Out of Chaos an organizing newsletter

Reimagining

Last week I had an inquiry from a man who said his 80-year-old mother felt weighed down by her large apartment. Her goal, he said, was to pare her possessions down to a suitcase so she could be free to travel, visit her children and enjoy her life, unencumbered. The week before that, I consulted with a widower who has decamped to Florida. He’s ready to let everything in his New York apartment go. He’ll take his clothes—the summer stuff—a few papers, and not much else.

I’m awed by their bravery. I know myself: I was the kind of child who unpacked every stitch of clothing from my suitcase when we went on family vacations. I love to travel, but I also love to nest. I don’t think I’ll ever want to live out of a suitcase, but I completely understand the urge to divest and not feel so tethered by your possessions.

What to do? Resist. Not only do I resist buying anything, I’m also trying to develop the habit of divesting myself of things on a regular basis. I’m taking it further than the clothes the kids have outgrown and paperbacks we aren’t going to read again, and letting go of a hoard of silver-plate platters that I never use and books I inherited that I will never read.

This pandemic has shaken things up, and people, coming out on the other side, are making bold decisions: moving, downsizing, reimagining life. Your environment can both inspire and inhibit you. I remember my first apartment, a totally spartan studio in Chicago. It was the spring of 1988, I was less than a year out of college, and that apartment was a blank canvas on which I could create the grownup life I’d dreamt of for years. In recent years, with my husband and kids, my canvas hasn’t been so blank, and that’s as it should be for now; my job is to make a comfortable, stable home for my kids, and with that comes a certain amount of “tetheredness.” But kids grow up, and move out. Our homes, for better and for worse, tend to define us, but they don’t have to. Change is in the air, and lightening the load, in ways both large and small, might just help you reimagine your life, and that could be pretty exciting.