Divesting

We recently sold our home. We are downsizing. In our future home we have no basement, we have less closet space and less space for books. We are divesting of rooms of furniture.
We are not finished. We have to move and we have to close on the home we are selling. When I look forward to our new home -in quiet neighborhood with a beautiful pond and wooded area with ducks, geese, fox and deer- I wonder why this was so difficut? Why did it take us years to take act? Explaining the hard work can come another time. But for now it is easier to write down the most important reasons.
First, Last year Pat became ill and had a knee replacement surgery with complications that put her in the hospital for 11 days and involved a long recovery. Because I wasn't working I was able to be there fulltime and I enjoyed it. We both agreed that we wanted to create the time to assure that we could be there for each when illnesses occur in the future. Second, There too many stories of people growing old and leaving their kids to intervene, move them out and decide what to do with the cluttered closets of things that they couldn't throw away. Our kids may still have to do that some day, but we can make the load abit lighter by starting now.
Third, a big house is not only expensive to maintain it is a big responsibility; to keep it clean, keep it in repair, and keep it up to date. We've cut our square footage by 1000 and our cost by 70%.
Fourth, We took a good haircut in the market as a result of the great recession. We decided to adjust our economic life to be more independent of the whims of the markets. (We are happy we had some "hair" to cut and that we had some left to protect and conserve. Many people aren't so lucky)

As we have explored and acted on these changes I have arrived at a point where where I am trying to make time is more important then money and relationships are more important than achievements. But it is a process and constant battle with the forces of consumerism telling us that what we drive, what we wear, are what define us. I am also discovering that many of the the things I value aren't worth anything in the market place. In the middle of our process of readying our home for sale and deciding what would go with us and what would stay I came across a poem by Donald Hall, titled "The Things". I have included it below.

The Things
"When I walk in my house I see pictures,
bought long ago, framed and hanging
--de Kooning, Arp, Laurencin, Henry Moore--
that I've cherished and stared at for years,
yet my eyes keep returning to the masters
of the trivial: a white stone perfectly round,
tiny lead models of baseball players, a cowbell,
a broken great-grandmother's rocker,
a dead dog's toy---valueless, unforgettable
detritus that my children will throw away
as I did my mother's souvenirs of trips
with my dead father, Kodaks of kittens,
and bundles of cards from her mother Kate."

What's New?

I have retired from my consulting business and from 30 years as a marketing, business development and strategic planning executive in health care. It was not an easy decision.

With the encouragement of my stepdaughter Kim Westra I have begun working part time as a substitute teacher. For the first time in my life I'm licensed. Think of subsitute teaching as a job where each assignment is like the first day of work on a new job.

Pat and I have sold our home in south Minneapolis. Yesterday we closed on a town home in Maplewood, a suburb of St. Paul. We close on the sale of our home in Minneapolis in May. When it's all done we will have halved our square footage, eliminated all debt and reduced our housing cost by 70%.

Those are the headlines for me over the past 8 months.