Less Is Really More

We downsized—finally!

We have just gone from having five full baths, two half baths, three full kitchens, three separate roofs, three furnaces and god knows how many square feet (probably upwards of 5000)—to 1 bath, 1 kitchen, and 1 furnace. All in under 1300 square feet. What we got rid of was our main house and what we called our “show barn” complete with its own 2 story, 2 bedroom, 2 bath apartment.

We use to own, operate and live in a combined art gallery and antique store. This spring we sold it and its associated myriad headaches to a couple of guys who have no idea of what they want to do with it. Maybe a decorator’s show place. (For one of them anyway.) Maybe just a place to hang out, have guests and give parties.

(I like to tell myself I don’t give a damn what they do, but truth told a little part of me still wants them to be kind and generous to the place that we have loved and cared for for so long.)

We now live in a tiny remodeled barn whose insides resemble an open loft studio apartment. The transition was not easy. Between us we had been in the “thing” business for well over 20 years. We bought, displayed, moved, installed and shipped art and antiques. Admittedly hanging a painting in some rich Texan’s second or third vacation home on the coast of Maine was much easier than schlepping a bureau up to the third floor bedroom of a drafty 19th century cape but when you came right down to it, we bought, sold and moved big and little “things”.

Our downsizing tale began in earnest with getting rid of of our antique inventory. Over the last five years or so the antique business has changed radically. In the good old days (think 1980s) we could drive a U Haul across the country and stop in out-of-the-way towns and even huge regional antique malls and buy what was known then as “shabby chic” country pieces, drive them back to Maine and sell them at a decent profit. We could even get good “brown furniture” at local auctions (dark hard wood sideboards, dining room sets, side tables, chest of drawers and highboys of the kind your grandmother owned) and sell those things to people for their primary residences back home in New York, Chicago and Houston. I might add we could do this as long as we were not seen to be bidding against our customers.

Today, everything we used to sell has dropped in price by easily forty percent. To get rid of all our remaining unsold inventory in a hurry (the buyers wanted to close in six weeks) we sold what we could to local dealers at ridiculously low prices and tried to give our kids some of the better stuff (they wanted very little). We gave away some of our art for acquisition or for auction to benefit Maine museums and art nonprofits and put what we just could not yet part with in storage. We consigned a bunch of stuff to be auctioned off. It also was bought at a fraction of our cost and finally we just took what we couldn’t get rid of any other way to Goodwill Industries or the dump.

Getting rid of so much of ones worldly possessions was a debilitating daily slog that went on for many weeks, but here’s the thing–it is absolutely amazing how little we find we now actually need and how much personal freedom (not to mention money) we have gained by living with less.

Let me show you what’s left:

1. No bedroom at all, only a sleeping loft.

2. Our dining room is a long, thin table in the area behind the the sofa.

3. A very usable kitchen sits mostly behind a half wall.

4. Our little but very functional laundry.

5. And last a nice bath with a tub and shower.

The moral of this story is that as we age, we become used to our surroundings and often very attached to them. In my opinion this is risky because if we are not careful, we will lose sight of how difficult maintaining the status quo is becoming and by the time we realize we are living with too much stuff in a place we can no longer take care of, we will be too old and infirm to do anything about it.

Do not get me wrong. Downsizing is hard and can be scary at times. However, you may well find that not doing it will be worse.

Finally!

Lest you think our new place has no room for frivolities. We brought along our pet shark.