And it was also that there was much less stuff. People could own one coat, one bicycle per family, etc. There were no closets full of junk. Furniture lasted a a lifetime. Or maybe I lived in a different society? We generally shopped once a year and it was for school clothes. We wore things until they wore out. We had one car forever (remember the floor rusted out.).
Yes that is how I was raised and how I raised my kids. A truck we owned when young had a hole on the floor from rust. I put a rug over it so dirt would not blow up on us. In the Midwest rust would always happen before a car was worn out.
Of all the things in my house I worry about my daughters having to see or deal with, my collections aren't among them.
My therapist told me the way to achieve true inner peace is to finish what I start. So far today, I have finished two bags of M&Ms and a chocolate cake. I feel better already!
My grandmother passed away when I was 6, 44 years ago. I didn't know it at the time but apparently she had gone around her house and put stickers on the bottoms of a few things that she thought one of her eight children wanted. After she died the plan was to have a garage sale and then split the money 8 ways. One of my aunts was notoriously cheap so instead of just buying things at the sale that she wanted (like my mom did) she kept insisting that "mommy wanted me to have that!" and probably took home a whole car full of depression glass and other worthless crap. I certainly didn't feel that way when my parents died. I wanted the gorgeous cedar chest, my mom's hope chest, a few pieces of embroidery and lace that ancient relatives made and the adorable picture of my dad and his brother and sister when they were pre-teens in the early 30's, grimacing because they'd just been woken up from their nap because that's when the photographer had shown up at their house. Thankfully my mother was never a collector. It was super easy to just let goodwill take everything else.
We are in the process of downsizing my MIL from a 3 bedroom cape to a one bedroom apartment in a 55+ Community. We have had to help her get rid of a lot of stuff and still there is much to be sorted and gotten rid of as we move her into her new place over the next week or so.
Personally we downsized last year and are still in the process of fine tuning our possessions. I still feel as though we live in a space that is more than we need but the location is ideal and we love our new neighborhood. We are in a mobile home that is 1018 sq ft. I could have easily gone down to 700 sq ft but we couldn't beat the view from this one and decided to live with the extra space.
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