After my wife passed away, I realized that I had a lot of work to do.  I don’t just mean making funeral arrangements and sorting out financial affairs, I mean what am I going to do with all of this “stuff?”

Okay, here’s the deal, when my wife and I got married I had quite a bit of stuff.  My wife also had a lot of stuff.  Then, throughout our 15 year marriage we accumulated even more stuff.  Then, my mother passed away, my maternal grandmother passed away, and my father passed away, within about a year of each other.  After the dust settled, guess who ended up with all of their stuff?  What a mess!

It was a real challenge trying to figure out what to do with all of their belongings.  We ended up holding an estate sale.  We sold almost everything.  Then, we donated some of the rest of it.  We tossed more of it, but there was still stuff that ended up coming home with me.

Now that my wife has passed, I am stuck with all of these belongings that never belonged to me.  Plus, I still have all of the belongings my wife and I accumulated over our 15 years of marriage.  I am now on my own, in this big house, that is way too big for just me.  Heck, it was even too big for my wife and me.  So, I have been thinking about downsizing.  To be completely honest I still have almost all of my wife’s clothes and personal items.  She had a lot of books too.  I let my brother-in-law come and take three totes full of books.  My bookshelves look like they haven’t even been touched!  In other words, I still have a ton of books.

In order for me to downsize, I am going to have to get rid of a lot of this stuff.  I would like to give most of it away to family.  Some of it I would like to sell.  The rest of it I would like to just toss.  I even need to go through all of my stuff and decide what to do with it.  I think a good portion of it just needs to be donated or tossed.  I would like to give some of my possessions to my kids.  But they can’t have my records until I’m gone.

I’ve been thinking that maybe I ought to rent one of those household sized dumpsters.  I could throw out all of my “stuff to be tossed” items into the dumpster.  I don’t even know where I would find one of these dumpsters.  I would probably need it for a few days because I would still have to sort through all of this stuff and decide what to do with it.  Then I would have to find people to help me carry all of the “to be tossed” junk into the dumpster.

One of the important questions I have about downsizing is, where would I go?  I could sell my house and come away with a good chunk of equity.  But where am I going to live?  If I bought another home, even if it was a smaller home than what I have now, in this market, it’s still going to be pricey.  The equity from my current home might cover the down payment on a new home.  But I would probably be stuck with a huge mortgage that I can’t afford.

I really don’t want to move out of the area I’m in.  I live in a place called Stansbury Park.  It’s in Tooele County, Utah.  It is such a wonderful place to live.  I really like all of my neighbors (even those that have dogs that bark incessantly), I love the people in my church, and I really like living in this somewhat rural community.  From where I live, Salt Lake City is only about 30 miles away.  It’s not a big deal for me to drive into Salt Lake to go shopping or go to doctor appointments.  Sometimes I even drive into town just to go to dinner.  Plus, my children, my daughter-in-law, and grandson live in the Salt Lake area.  I enjoy driving into town to see them.

You Tube has been my go to solution for learning about stuff I know nothing about.  So, that’s where I went to see if I could find some answers to my dilemma.  Most of these “experts” claimed to be interested in helping you downsize.  What I found out is most these folks are real estate agents.  They are only interested in selling you a home.

I did find one remarkably interesting video on downsizing.  It was posted by a woman that just went through the downsizing process before moving into her new home.  Her video was “25 things to get rid of when downsizing.”  Some of the items on her “get rid of” list didn’t pertain to me, like paint, old shower curtains, baby clothes, old toys, and old rugs.  I really don’t have any of that kind of stuff.

She did have some items on her list that definitely pertained to me and I have plenty of these items in my home, like kitchen gadgets, coffee mugs, games, college textbooks, and old technology.  My wife and I collected a large number of kitchen gadgets over the years.  For example, we actually have a set of measuring spoons for: a tad, a smidgen, a pinch, and a dash.  I’m serious!  I actually have these.  I have already gotten rid of a bunch of coffee mugs since I quit drinking coffee.  I tell myself I will use the remaining mugs for hot chocolate.  Who am I kidding?  I have at least a dozen board games that I will never play.  Most of them have never even been opened.  I also still have my college textbooks.  Why?  I have no idea.  They’re 40 years old.  I’m never going to use them again.  Lastly, I still have quite a bit of old technology laying around.  I have some cd players, a dvd player, a Wii game that I will never play, and several old cell phones that need to go. Believe me, I have plenty of stuff that needs to go.  It’s overwhelming.  It’s also been very difficult to think about getting rid of stuff that my wife was fond of, like her machete.  Yes, my wife actually had a machete from when she was in Honduras.  What in the world am I going to do with a machete?  I wish I could use it to hack away all of my stuff!