To downsize, or not

After nearly fifty years in the same house, we’ve been slowly trying to downsize. We have one married son, but they live out of state with nine-year-old Kate. And they’re not into family items just because they’re family items.

There are boxes of books sitting around, ready to be hauled off to Many Hands. The ones I’ve saved for Dan to share with Kate, I’ve checked with them first. Well, they’re not interested in the Little House books. Nor most of the others. They already had paperbacks of the Narnia books.

Even artwork that Dan did as a kid and the map of Narnia. He asks Kate if she’d interested. What’s fun is that she’s said yes to most of those! His sixth grade watercolor of ears of corn made its way to her bedroom wall, over the Super Nova quilt her father designed on graph paper as a child.

I’m hoping they will accept and enjoy Great Grandmother’s dishes from 1939 with a winsome family story. And the small poppy plate that belonged to the woman who came to Iowa with her family in two wagons in 1855, at the same age that Kate is now.

Don’t die early.

Wait until your children are old enough to appreciate it, and then leave them everything.

Recently I read a book called They Left Us Everything: A Memoir. “After almost twenty years of caring for elderly parents—first for their senile father, and then for their cantankerous ninety-three-year-old mother—author Plum Johnson and her three younger brothers experience conflicted feelings of grief and relief when their mother, the surviving parent, dies. Now they must empty and sell the beloved family home, which hasn’t been de-cluttered in more than half a century. Twenty-three rooms bulge with history, antiques, and oxygen tanks. ” As they sort through all the belongings, daughter Plum reminisces so it becomes a memoir.

She had the luxury to live in the large family home for several months, coming to terms with her parents’ stormy relationship after they had died, and especially with her difficult mother. The author’s advice? “Don’t die early. Wait until your children are old enough to appreciate it, and then leave them everything.”

The Sentimental Decorator

Then I ran onto Brittany Shepard on Instagram. This Sentimental Decorator recommends keeping the things you like and enjoying them every day. We used to do this, especially for holidays and family gatherings. I enjoyed using Great Grandmother’s dishes when Mom was still here, and I’d have her retell the story of shopping in Omaha’s Brandeis bargain basement with her grandmother to pick out new dishes.

Because of Brittany, last week I added this little Nine Patch quilt to my bed, a quilt hand stitched by my Great Grandmother Laura and hand quilted decades later by her oldest great granddaughter.

But octogenarians think about downsizing, among other things. What do you think?