My daughter urged me to get on the stick earlier this year when a friend’s hoarder mother passed away and left behind the unenviable task of clearing out her home.
I’m definitely no hoarder, but I finally realized that it was time to downsize, donate and discard.
Starting this summer, Freecycle and Trash Nothing patrons began carting away redundant cookware, canning supplies and costumes from our Palo Alto home. I sifted through a century of books that filled seven bookcases. I even sold an autographed copy of John Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley” to Faith Bell, owner of Palo Alto’s Bell’s Book Store, and shared a cherished family story.
In 1962, when my father was director of sales at Viking Press, he came home from the company Christmas party filled with excitement and three special gifts: the Steinbeck novel, a stuffed French poodle with a “Charley” tag and a Chinese lacquer chest filled with $50 in nickels. Some weeks before, my father had made a $50 bet with Viking publisher Tom Guinzburg that “Travels with Charley” would become a Book of the Month Club selection. Dad won, and Steinbeck inscribed the book: “To Bob Silver, The only man I know who literally has a nose full of nickels.” Faith bought the book, the toy and the chest.
Unlike my father, I didn’t have a nose full of nickels. But I had a kitchen, an attic, closets and a garage full of stuff that I didn’t need and my children didn’t want. My husband and I began with the easy stuff, borrowing a friend’s slide scanner to digitize our family’s photos. With that accomplished, I hauled heirloom china to UPS for packing and shipping to married granddaughters in Texas. I trekked to Goodwill with black bags full of clothing. We placed items nobody wanted on the curb for our neighborhood’s Big Cleanup Day.
The act of downsizing did more than clear out our home. It actually spurred our decision to move into senior housing. Just before the High Holy Days, after a grueling drive home from San Diego, I looked at my husband and said it’s time. Without missing a beat, he concurred. We are old. Eighty-something is not the new fifty-something. If we were going to move into a senior community, we realized that we should do it while we are still reasonably able-bodied and young enough to enjoy the activities.
Since we had friends and fellow synagogue members at Palo Alto’s Moldaw Residences, which shares a campus with the Oshman Family JCC, we began to explore its independent living facilities. Friends invited us to visit their apartments and to join them at a Labor Day buffet, and sales director Stacy Guthmann welcomed us to an outdoor pre-Rosh Hashanah celebration.
By mid-October, we were sold. By the first of December, amid piles of boxes, we were ensconced in a top-floor apartment with views of spectacular sunsets.
It may be months before everything in our two-bedroom apartment is where I can find it, and storage is at a premium. As I write this column, my husband and his daughter are installing shelf units and pullouts in the closets and under the sinks.
It’s a process, and an adjustment. Before taking my first shower, I accidentally bumped into a hanging pullcord, which set off an alarm. I immediately called the concierge, who said she would alert the nurse’s station that the alarm was tripped by mistake. But she wasn’t quick enough. I hadn’t heard the knock on the door when I walked out of the bathroom stark naked to confront a visitor.
“Just checking!” said the female intruder from the nurse’s office as I grabbed a towel.
“You were lucky it wasn’t the fire department,” a woman remarked over dinner.
There’s gonna be a learning curve.