Small space living reminds me a little bit of planning our wedding. The ability to say “no” is essentially mandated by the itty bitty space restricting each decision. As I told my boss, you would think that working in a tiny cubicle since 2007 would have sort of inspired the need to purge, but it didn’t. There are always more places to put things in an office, and there is an essential need to keep things for my job. I don’t think the Bar or our clients would let us off the hook for getting rid of case-related materials and citing as our excuse that we simply ran out of room for them. But, I digress.

As many of you know, being in a house – especially a large house – provides ample opportunity to keep things. I notice it every time we offer something to our neighbors. One of them said this weekend, “I don’t really need this giant ladder, but I’ll keep it for you until you need it again.” HAVE I MENTIONED WHAT AMAZING NEIGHBORS WE HAVE?! (Said neighbor is not storing our ladder. Another neighbor inherited it instead.) We have a big house, and an attic, and a shed, and a garage. We have amassed a lot of stuff since 2009, and even before we got to this house. I see the same behavior with my sister, who has a big house, including basement and attic, in additional to numerous farm sheds. I don’t have room to put things and she kindly doesn’t mind just having them at her place. We have long talked about “permanent loans” because she knows it’s hard for me to let go of things. I hope that’s changing.

I didn’t mind having my parents’ and my “stuff” sitting in front of the treadmill at my house because it didn’t cost us anything other than a few square feet, and it caused me some annoyance every time I looked at it and knew I should go through it and get rid of it. What really annoyed me was trying to go through it in a hurry (impossible) as we moved out of the house, and now knowing it’s in a storage unit, which costs money and is inconvenient. (Rationalization #1: it is not the only stuff in the storage unit. It is not the sole reason we spend that money.) But yes, I must get through it. I want to scan and organize what’s worth keeping so it’s easy to access and only requires moving a flash drive, disc, or terabyte next time. It will also make me sneeze a lot less. Paper becomes very, very dusty.

The apartment I’m in now is spacious in some ways that don’t really matter (I’m looking at you, high ceilings that hold nothing but air, overhead lights, and ceiling fans). The bedroom does fit a king size bed and both of our dressers and night stands. (And I realize now that the dressers need to be taller, like all the way to the ceiling with ladder attachments on the front, so they hold more stuff and I can reach it all.) The closet is a walk-in, but a small walk-in. I am about to spend a lot of time perusing Ikea, The Container Store, Target, and so on to see what containers are going to work best for all of the things we’ll need to store overhead on the shelves. I’m about to get rid of every piece of clothing I don’t love wearing or need to wear. I am not allowed to visit Bath and Body Works. I am not allowed to buy more shampoo, soap, nail polish, lotion, perfume, a variety of makeup products, laundry products, stationery, Scotch tape, wrapping paper, tissue paper, gift bags, socks, bedding, pajamas, and a slew of other things for a very long time. (I am low on wine, though. Wine donations being accepted pronto.)

I have trouble getting rid of things and saying no to taking new things. Being in this tiny apartment changes that. 727 square feet of attractive living space makes me want everything to have its place. As Pete and I emptied out our house, I could see again what it looked like when it wasn’t crammed full of more crap than we really needed. It looked spacious and magnificent and tidy. It looked reasonable. It didn’t look like I had hit every clearance rack or was nearing hoarder status or was a diva who needed more than 20 lotions and nail polishes and almost as many shampoos.

When I have space, I will fill it. A lot of people do, and I’m OK with it to a point. I was OK with it at the house, even as I knew it was too much and I needed to weed through it and get rid of a lot of it. I thought I had more time. I didn’t expect to move right now. I’m sure my mom didn’t expect to die when she did, either. (I credit/blame her with my keep-it-all tendencies. I credit Dad with my buy-lots-of-it tendencies. Most of my inheritance of light bulbs went to Good Will this weekend.)

Houses require more stuff than apartments. That’s why they give you yards and garages and sheds and attics, so you can put all your stuff somewhere. My new space is going to teach me how to do with less. Unless my new, smaller space is organized efficiently, I will hate it. I will hate accessing anything every time. I logically know that I have been given enough space to live comfortably, within my means. I logically know that I don’t need to keep so much stuff, lest I die and leave it for others to deal with . . . or lest we move again.

I still am who I am. I can’t just toss the boxes of mail from my family and my childhood friends. But I did pass along the adorable sombrero headband I was given Friday for Cinco de Mayo. It was awfully cute, but it made a stranger happy when I took it off my head and gave it to her, and now I don’t have to find somewhere to store it for the rest of my life, or drive it to Good Will later.

Baby steps.

I like to think if Mom were here, she would let me teach her these lessons I’ve learned about letting go of THINGS. But it took going through her almost-70-years worth of keeping things to really hammer it in for me. So instead, I think she and Dad are just helping me through this process from where they are, and sometimes I talk to them and they agree that it’s OK when I let their stuff go, like Dad’s imitation Uggs that are a men’s size 11 that I finally parted with over the weekend. He understood that I am a men’s size 7 and I did not need those shoes. He said that was just fine and I needed to make some room for Pete’s shoes in our new tiny uptown closet. Then he said he had to go because Elvis was putting on a concert. (Did this conversation really happen? I’ll just let you make up your own minds about that. Sometimes, it’s just how you look at things.)