THE SIMPLE CORRALS OF SUMMER

A friend dropped by for a deck visit to tell me about her summer plans to corral stuff. She is on a year-long project to rightsize her family home (with three teenagers) and to help downsize her parents from their 5-level split to a one-floor home. It’s been a heavy year of letting stuff go amid the pandemic, and she wants a break this summer. Yet she says her corralling of stuff will continue.

Her secret? Keep it SIMPLE.

While growing up on a mixed farm of cattle and grain, she was very familiar with the concept of corralling. To GATHER TOGETHER.

THEY LEFT US EVERYTHING

They Left Us Everything is a memoir by Canadian Plum Johnson about caring for her senior parents and the 16-month project of sorting and clearing their home. This contemporary story is set in her parents’ rambling 22-room house filled with decades of accumulation and memories. In sharp contrast to my recent blog posting, The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, Johnson finds real value in waiting until after someone’s death to sort their stuff.

How many of us have faced the experience of setting out on an excavation to clear an older relative or friend’s home? Without knowing what we will discover, we can enter with resentment and weariness or anticipation and curiosity!

ONE BOOKCASE ~ ONE LIFETIME

The days drag on or there are never enough hours in a day.

What’s your response to 50 days of physical distancing?

I hear comments on both ends of the continuum and everywhere in between. I learned early in this pandemic that our responses can greatly differ depending on our circumstances.

For some this is a time to double-down and do some deep downsizing. Tackling book shelves seem to be on many agendas.

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