It only sounds simple…

I spend my days (or evenings, rather) watching all the junk roll out the door at the Big Retail Store I work at. I often feel like I’ve landed there from another planet, observing these modern-day consumers pushing their overloaded carts past my checkpoint.

You might think that this nearly daily exposure to rampant consumerism would make it easier to continue my downsizing process.

But it makes it harder. I’m not just plagued with the ghosts of Depression-era relatives who whisper from the shadows that I might “need it someday”. It’s now a matter of what I may be forced to replace my furnishings with if I discover I do end up needing the item I discarded.

Do I really want to swap my vintage, albeit battered, chairs, lamps, side tables, handmade shelving units a family member made decades ago, all for cheap replacements from Big Retail Store? Breathe in that brand-new aroma of off-gassed chemicals instead of musty old furnishings?

No, I tell myself, I don’t.

Because I’m still carrying the weight of my grandparents’ legacy, which manifests itself as an innate frugality that balks at paying $28 for a potato masher and sends me on a quest through antique stores until I find one for $4.

I’m just being creatively melodramatic, you might say, but I recently unpacked possessions that had been boxed up for over five years, and discovered such treasures as glass candle jars from candles that had been burnt out, empty spice jars, empty (and clean) plastic sour cream containers, and, of course, lots and lots of used twist ties that I didn’t have the heart to throw out.

I bravely recycled those items save for a few distinctive-looking glass jars.

But maybe it’s not exercise in downsizing; it’s a journey of (midlife) self-discovery.

How much of these possessions actually reflect who I am? What out of all this stuff really resonates? Do I get rid of all this excess baggage to live more lightly on the Earth? By jettisoning this junk, am I making more room for other life forms like plants and animals and nature, and for myself to live a life with intention?

But in trying to get rid of it, I’m now stuck all over again with a question that has probably haunted my own relatives in turn.

Who is going to want all this crap?