Report from the "Rightsizing" Front Lines

I’ve made four cross-country trips since my book "Rightsizing Your Life"TM (currently in its third printing ) debuted in January of this year, and have been amazed by the “Me, too!” responses I’ve encountered from people I’ve met while lecturing about “downsizing with a difference.”

What folks seem to be resonating to is the idea that there isn’t one way to create an environment after age 50 that’s “right” for everyone. Downsizing to one person may mean they’re going from a large family home to a two-bedroom, two-bath condo. But for others, downsizing may only involve weeding out piles of possessions that no longer have genuine meaning and are cluttering their life. Still others may decide they want to create a painting studio or a home gym in the space where their teenagers used to have a garage band.

A couple I knew in Pasadena actually “upsized” from a modest, Spanish-style home to a fairly palatial adobe manse in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The pair had combined households late in life and had a beautiful collection of religious and folk art which the smooth, stucco walls displayed to perfection. For them, that was “rightsizing” their lives together.

In Boulder, Colorado, where I spoke at a Senior Co-Housing confab in May, I was given a whirlwind tour of several interesting housing choices which definitely involved rightsizing. Wild Sage is an inter-generational development where everyone owns their own home with a private kitchen, but also shares grounds and a “Common House” with a state-of-the-art kitchen and an inviting living room with lots of comfortable furniture. There, a couple of times a week, the residents--if they’re of a mind --break bread together, swapping the week’s stories and enjoying a sense of community.

Across the street, Silver Sage, built by local Wonderland Hill Developers is nearing completion as Colorado’s first cohousing development for seniors. With spirituality as one of its core principles, Silver Sage includes a meditation room and targets healthy, active adults who want to age in a community of kindred spirits.

Across town is the independent Poplar Street clustered cottage community where 14 free-standing homes of less than 900 square feet built on 1.4 acres have made affordable housing possible for former school teachers, fire-fighters, and other hard-working folk in a college town where they were about to be priced out of the market.

Each and every one making such major lifestyle changes related stories about the difficulty they had deciding which of their possessions to keep and which to toss. All of them said, however, that the process of editing their worldly goods down to only what they used and loved eventually became liberating.

I had to smile when some of these “rightsizers” coming to hear me speak purchased "Rightsizing Your Life" to -- in their words --“finish the job.” That’s the moment when I confessed that my husband and I still have an 8x10 off-site storage locker after making the transition from 4000 feet of living space in Southern California to our current blissful 1275 square feet overlooking San Francisco Bay.

Hey, we’re human, just like the rest of you!

Many of the people I met during my recent book tour also had to resort to some off-site storage for a while, and many others related how they’d made several trips to The Container Store, Bed Bath and Beyond and other home organization pit-stops to get the job done.

Are they happy now that they’d lived through the rightsizing process? You bet!
So stay tuned for more rightsizing adventures…

Ciji Says, "Don't Just Downsize; Rightsize!"

I wrote my book, "Rightsizing Your Life," because I needed a road map -- a blueprint -- for how I was going to live the rest of my life. Like millions of other midlife Americans, several “can’t-ignore-‘em” events had prompted me to re-evaluate my surroundings, along with everything else that was happening in my life after I reached age 50.

My child had left for college; my husband was changing careers; my own career had encountered some major speed bumps; the family dog had died; friends had moved away; It was definitely the time for a change — but to what?

After 22 years in the same house, questions loomed: Where do I want to live now? Do I still need a big house now that my son has entered adulthood? What am I going to do with all those photographs, books, files, at the back of my closets and those dead vacuum cleaners in the basement? How can I build a meaningful, happy life without all the ‘stuff ’that’s weighing me down?

And what if members of my family didn’t agree with my ideas about the future? How could I bear to winnow my ceramic swan collection or break the news to my son that when next he visited, he’d probably have to sleep on a convertible couch?

Through trial, error, and not a little serendipity, I discovered what I came to call “Rightsizing,” I evolved a process of simplifying my surroundings so that I could focus my energies on what matters most: being with the people I love and pursuing activities that fire my imagination and make me excited about getting up in the morning. I didn’t merely want less or simpler…I wanted better.

In contrast to “downsizing,” rightsizing is a process, not an event, and its outcome has more to do with the “right” of the equation than “size.” It involves not just the square footage of a person’s living quarters, but an approach to all aspects of living, holding out the opportunity to “get it right, once an for all.”

Rightsizing in this context is a conscious, practical, and psychological evolution in the way we live our lives, an approach that enables us to create new surroundings that will profoundly impact the way we feel and behave—for the better!

Practically speaking, it leads to simplifying and decluttering, perhaps even redesigning an entire environment. It can prompt a move—either to smaller, more user-friendly quarters, or to a home (or homes) that could be larger, but better suited to our present needs.

For many, the rightsizing process will certainly involve physical and emotional upheaval and could even result in a total reinvention of your personal ecosystem. For the resilient, however, these major life changes provide an opportunity to discover the truest sense of “home” you may ever have known.

So, step into the wonderful world of "Rightsizing Your Life," and fully explore this web site to see if there are resources and information that can speed you on your way to reinventing the rest of your days!

Best wishes for serenity,

Ciji Ware