...Years of frantic pick up and hide the stuff from view...
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11 room house. 1600 sq ft shop building. 2 sheds. 43 years.
Now, it’s time to downsize.
Nightmare. Where did it all come from? Why was any specific thing kept?
About 800 sq ft left to sort and triage.
Wish we’d done it as we went along.
Qx says moving back & forth across the Pacific can help. LOL.
Army Major Ron Prichard Ph.D. is a renowned construction safety expert. He has much to say about entropy (which is what kills you when you don't continuously clean up after yourself), to wit:
"You can increase the rate of increase of entropy either of two ways, both of which I have encountered in my own personal situation (which is why I speak of it continuously with my family - to the extent that when I want one of my kids to clean something up, I tell them it is time to extract some entropy from their situation).
"The first way is by ignoring the various places in your life where it is accumulating. This is what overcomes most people. Because they do not attend to maintenance on a regular basis, husbandry, everything is deteriorating, (at different rates); but it accumulates until it becomes an overwhelming load. Then, when folks are finally compelled to attend to it, they do not know where or how to start, so, more and more builds while they fiddle around trying to think of what to do.
"The second way is to make your life ever more complicated. The more stuff you are engaged in, or the more things you accumulate, the more points which can feel the effect of entropy. It is easy to get distracted from the maintenance mode to do something new and it's far more fun, but, therein lays the rub. If you still cling to the first when you jump to the second, entropy ramifies, as there are now 2 unattended points of attack for it, and on, and on ad infinitum.
"I have run major personal experiments, and would state unequivocally that entropy builds continuously, but must be extracted in chunks, and the only choices you have are to attend to it or let it destroy the "thing." If you chose to attend to it, you can either extract it in small, daily (or other short duration increments), or let it build until you have to do a giant extraction. My children prefer the latter, which I get on to them about, as my own experimental results shows that by waiting, you are not likely to ever catch up, as the size of the extraction task saps your motivation as you go, everything else is going unattended while you are doing the extraction, and you are frequently interrupted and easily distracted, and then, even if you do finish the large task, multiple smaller piles from other sources have accumulated to the point where they must be attended to, and so the entropy in the large area starts accumulating again, and the procrastination that allowed it to get so high in the first place locks in again. It is a vicious cycle.
If you cannot keep up with entropy on a regular basis, through the practice of disciplined husbandry, provided you do not want to be overcome by the cumulative effects of entropy, you must reduce, discard or even abandon pursuits in order to fit the demands for practicing husbandry to fit the capabilities of time. However, it is far better, with a greater likelihood of reaching a temporary state of Zero Entropy by the daily (or short duration) practice of husbandry. You can manage entropic reduction, within the limits of energy, attention and time constraints, if you keep up in small doses of extraction, with self discipline on a daily basis. The benefits of this effort will be immediately visible, which furthers motivation through actual achievement, and, if your structure and husbandry method is appropriate, the opportunity for entropic ramification is significantly diminished. Thus, you must reduce entropy with regular, disciplined vigor, or succumb to its accumulation. There is no third option."
Ron Prichard (2009)
“Why was any specific thing kept?”
Simple: You might need it again.
Downsizing advice: Throw out anything that doesn’t bring you joy.
Today I threw out all the vegetables and the electric bill.