Ironic, yet I don't think this is a minimalist failure. It is a journey, some are rockier and steeper than others. If you are judging, at least hear me out. And feel free to offer your helpful insight in the comments.
We moved to a technically bigger house and we don't fit. I joke that the people who had the house built originally were claustrophobic minimalists. More likely, they were quite well-off and had a different mentality, that they will buy it again when they need it, and they don't need the tools of our everyday life, because they hire people to do 'that'. By 'that' I mean, cleaning, auto care, maintenance, repair, Lawn Care, House maintenance and repair, etc. I don't think they spent winters here either (and the HVAC system layout suggests it was primarily a summer home, but i may be wrong). This house literally has minimal storage, but lots of open space (which feels great!).
We decided to sell our previous house in order to give each child their own bedroom as they become adults and were intending to attend the local college.While we did not need as much living space as the new home provided, we did LOVE the location, and it was literally the only home that came for sale that fit our needs in the time-frame we had. Unfortunately, we lost our workshop spaces as well as storage. The last house had an attic, a full cellar that provided storage and workshop space, a mini-barn for storing outdoor gear, and a garage with lots of overhead storage. The new place has a finished basement, offering an exercise space, office, guest space/rec room, so it's great. However, there nowhere to store our off-season, crafting, and workshop tools. There is basically no attic space and the garage has REALLY short ceilings (we used to put bikes, skis, sleds, bins of seasonal sports equipment, etc on the ceiling racks.
In the process of staging our last home, we found plenty to pass on. We were pretty amazed by what we found to gift to others (Huge fans of Buy Nothing, but sometimes the best perk of living on a busy road was the ability to leave stuff at the end of the driveway and have it magically disappear!!) I probably still have some of the pictures from that time to add to this post.
Then came packing to move and we just kept shedding things that we decided did not make the cut! Again this was surprising. Because of the timing of the move, and because we sold our house at noon and bought the new one at 1 pm, we decided to get storage and start packing into that ahead of time (thank goodness!!!) Honestly, we were still moving stuff a couple of days after the sale. and seeing all of it in storage was eye-opening, but we really did not have the time to contemplate.
We had 2 units, but we did not fill either, we probably could have just tetris'ed all of it into 1 unit. If we'd been in a better place physically, we wanted to fill them so there would be almost nothing to move on the day of the sale, this just did not happen. Fortunately, our son's friends helped us a LOT on moving day!!!
Well, we got our stuff moved and I had surgery the next day. The plan had been for my husband to retrieve one box per day and we would deal with it. At this point, we realized how little storage we had and knew that there had to be some deep cuts. My husband did not get those boxes. That task had always been mine in past moves, and so it waited until I could walk again, over 6 months later, but still unable to do a lot. I wish I had done more prior to the move. It is so hard to give stuff away LOL! people want it, but they don't just want it free, they want it delivered LOL!
Tonight I offered up those Tupperware pieces (I included the article about toxins in the offer...) someone would like me to deliver them. I could put them ebay - yup people are buying them! $20 +shipping and I have the matching spoons to sweeten the deal, but then I have to pay all of the fees, shipping, and taxes, but I suppose it would net me about $5 towards my measuring cup replacement...
A year later, I have a pile of things in my living space that still needs homes (most have been passed on or put away as it comes in). I still have both of the storage units, each about 1/3 full- yes I should combine them, but each has some large items that are too heavy to move without help- and no, there is no space for them here, so they have to find new stewards. These are tasks that sound so easy to talk about but are much harder to accomplish. Again I wish I had taken pictures of the workshop setup so that I could post them for sale. My husband had wanted to get things to the point he could set them up in storage for pictures, but he was too busy and then it was cold...so here we are if you had told me 2.5 years ago we would be renting storage, I would have said sure we have some fat to trim, but it all fits comfortably in our home, I know where everything is, and my house is super tidy, why would I spend money I do not have on storage. Honestly, I have had a conversation with my husband about, if we had ditched/donated everything after the first month, we could have replaced what we truly missed with all we have spent on storage fees!!! not to mention all the time heartache and arguments!!!!
This is all true. But in the end, we will have considerably fewer belonging here in our larger home we have added a handful of pieces that we did not have in the old house. Yet we have passed on far more items than we have added. It's been confusing and frustrating. Over a year later we still have both units, and we have removed the majority of things from them, but deciding to let go has been slow, tedious work. and finding appropriate homes for the materials we want to keep has been nearly impossible. It has eaten away at our time and nerves, and slowly we let go...so much more work to do!
On paper, this situation should not be, more space should make it easier to organize our things without clutter. Though I am overall glad for the change. I will miss our woodworking shop and my glass studio. I will not miss all of that funky wood dust in our basement!!! And we have kept a full kit of modular tools, but it will be a lot more work to do a project this way. They will have to happen in the garage or in the driveway. same with a glass window project, which I would still really like to do for our new home. So huge life changes yet we have kept moving in the minimizing direction on this journey.
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