We didn’t want to go far — few downsizers do Don’t dread downsizing — a smaller home makes you feel like newlyweds! Furniture? Face it, some things just won’t fit
We did it! We decluttered, emptied sheds, filled skips, overloaded local charity shops. We defied sentiment and moved on. We downsized!
We did as politicians keep nagging us t o do, t aking up l ess space f or ourselves and our possessions. We admitted that we are, mainly, only two in the house.
it’s become political — the disapproval of baby-boomers rattling around in houses too big for them. We are told that young families need space, and that there’s no call for ageing parents to hang on to surplus bedrooms and struggle to heat the old family pad.
Over- 60s supposedly have seven million spare bedrooms: the equivalent of 2.6 million family homes. if we all moved on, it would be the equivalent of ten years’ worth of government housebuilding targets.
But no one willingly adjusts their life just to help official statistics. There are other triggers: above all, the urge to release a bit of money, for fun or to help a child on to the housing ladder.
We were also swayed by a callously plain-spoken friend. ‘do it in your early 60s,’ she said. ‘Then it’s a new adventure and you’ve still got the energy to cart boxes around. Otherwise, it’ll be an emergency at 80, with people badgering you to go into a care home.’
i recalled my mother’s departure from the rambling, leaky family house of my childhood to a snug cottage, and her second downshift to a ground-floor flat. Both gave her a new lease of life. i observed the carefree tidiness of smaller spaces: a place for everything, tidy as a boat’s cabin.
i contemplated the sprawling vagueness of my home in dunwich, Suffolk; t he way t hat l ong- bel oved objects a nd furniture were hardly noticed any more. i saw our yards of dusty, random books (no one needs f our copies of The Mayor Of Casterbridge — how did that happen?).
i shuddered at neglected chests and hampers and deep, deep wardrobes full of random oddities. (No one needs three snorkel sets, either.) i admitted that there are limits to the number of stuffed babyhood toys it is sane to keep.
Then there was the stuff inherited when my mother floated peacefully into eternity, leaving me with great drifts of her lifetime archives and possessions to sort out.
The house and garden — and the barn, full of boxes, unsorted, from an even bigger house long ago — were full of memories, yet the house felt tired.
Tired of us. Bored, dyspeptic, needing a purge. As we hauled and sorted and stared in amazement at the junk we owned, the very bricks seemed to sigh with relief.
We didn’t want to go far: few downsizers do, having worked out that the dream of moving to a distant, favourite holiday spot can leave you isolated and shiveringly bored in winter.
Most people want to stay within five miles of their previous home and friends, research suggests.
Mind you, the same research said that older people need ‘modern, digitally enabled flats’, which was a step too far for us. Some chaps — mine included — will never be happy without a workshop/shed. So we shifted five-and-a-half miles, from the middle of a bird reserve to a semi on the edge of Walberswick, the village where i lived when i was a child.
We left a huge basement library, dining-room and mini-cinema, a big sitting room, three bedrooms plus guest flat.
We now have two small but shipshape bedrooms and a tiny downstairs room with a sofabed. i am incurably keen on having people to stay, so we’ve put a shepherd’s hut in the garden for when the spare room and sofabed are full.
To my husband’s despair, i have also sneaked in one classy fold-up, a moderately upmarket camp-bed and one lethal World War i khaki canvas thing. Hospitality is my nonnegotiable red line.
it’s probably genetic. in the flat that became my mum’s final home, numerous grandchildren got tucked up using ancient Arab rugs, sofa- cushions and moth- eaten chaises longues. No two downsizings are the same, and ours was rural. But many of the lessons we learned apply to anyone. The first is about clutter.
You can’t cram a quart into a pint pot, as Granny used to say, so be realistic. ruthless U.S. minimalists say that any ‘just i n case’ objects, clothes or books should go if they could be replaced if the need arises ‘in 20 minutes for 20 dollars’.
Take a deep breath, get some plastic boxes and start half a year before the move. Categorise things as pure rubbish or charity-shop and jumble-sale.
Note which of your children, nephews, nieces or friends’ offspring are setting up home, and pl y t hem with your unwanted furniture, curtains, crockery and kitchen equipment. it’s nice to think of it being used, and, frankly, one rarely misses anything.
A bonus is that as you reduce the volume, you rediscover long-forgotten treasures. in the new house are pictures, objects, photos and nice jugs we hadn’t registered for years, because they were in the spare bedroom or a dark cupboard.
They spring back to life in their new setting.
Mementos of bygone family and friends spring back, too: not lost but revived and freshened in memory to smile from new mantelpieces.
We have fewer walls to hang things on, so our huge collages of holidays or schooldays are out of their dusty frames and in a big, safe art folder so that we or posterity can turn the pages with enjoyment.
Furniture? Face it, some of it just won’t fit. it’ll cramp your new rooms. Our enormous bed had to go, and the sofa the old dog used to like, and the stupidly big armchair and that interesting hall cupboard.
But the things we kept we love all the more.
And it is fun getting a few quid f rom the l ocal auction and buying things which do fit.
Books? We sold a third of them, but the very act of culling meant t he r ediscovery of treasures. i hadn’t read rumer Godden f or y e ars, or L. P. Har t l ey, or r eally l ooked through the old comic strips i once collected. Now i do.
Adult children’s stuff? Ah, that is a universal moan.
Youth often stays elegantly minimalist in trendy flats while sneakily keeping cup-board-fulls of random clothes and souvenirs in their old bedroom at home.
When you’re decluttering, so must they. A couple of drawerfuls can remain — tops. it’s another rite of passage and probably good for all of you. responsibility passes on down
the generations. Good. There’ll still be somewhere to bung what’s left. Family archives, old letters, children’s primary school drawings, treasured toys for potential or actual grandchildren.
We now have a garage that’s half-full of plastic chests — though less than a quarter of those which once resided in the old barn and garage after 35 years of family life.
Most downsize homes have somewhere — a glory-hole for such things. And if not, there is always Big Yellow Storage.
Expensive, yes, but it offers a year or two to convince yourself that some things really aren’t worth hoarding. One is not a dung beetle, or a dead Egyptian Pharaoh.
Hand on heart, downsizing is ultimately fun.
As a therapeutic exercise on the more fraught days, I can strongly recommend a peaceful visit to John Lewis to buy a brand new bathmat and tea towels for the new house.
A bit sad, you say? A bit Aunt-Agatha? Not at all. It’s more like being newlyweds again: nesting in the tiny first flat with the wedding-presents. Honest.