Downsizing: Part 2 of How We Gave Up Our Stuff and Became Nomads

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“It’s not me, it’s you.” That’s how I felt about our house eight years ago.

Our rambling home in the Phoenix suburbs had been a great place to raise a family, but when our kids flew the nest, it felt like a favorite shirt that had become stretched and droopy. It just didn’t fit anymore.

That was 2017. Lisa and I had recently completed our decluttering project, the we-didn’t-know-it-at-the-time first step in our nomad journey (I wrote about that here in part 1). On the job front, I was winding down my twenty-six-year music career and making my first tentative attempts at writing a novel. The change freed my schedule significantly, and with Lisa already an established author, work no longer tied us to Phoenix.

It made sense to live near one of our kids. Since our daughter Kennedy’s acting career required her to be mobile and our artist-son Kilian was established in Sacramento, California, we chose the Golden State.

But the seemingly logical move wasn’t that simple. I was a routine-loving homebody who struggled with change. Sell everything? Pick up and move to California? Leave all our friends and our life of thirteen years? Go from a house in a quiet desert to a midtown apartment? Despite our ill-fitting domicile, I was dragging my feet. 

Ever-patient and creative, Lisa came up with the solution. We rented an apartment in Sacramento while keeping the house in Phoenix and lived in both places for one year. This allowed me to “try on” the new lifestyle before fully committing.

In Phoenix, we had to drive everywhere. In Sacramento, we lived without a car and walked to almost everything. Dozens of restaurants were a stone’s throw away. We had a coffee shop in our building. A park with mature trees sat across the street. I wandered art galleries and discovered the delight of olallieberry scones at Fox & Goose Public House.

Lisa and I wandering near our Sacramento apartment (I was growing a beard to officiate our son’s Lord of the Rings themed wedding—yes, it was as cool as it sounds!)

By the end of the test period, we were both hooked. We loved our walk-centered life near our son and daughter-in-law in a maintenance-free apartment. No more yard work or weekend home-improvement projects. We enjoyed being in a much smaller space with much less stuff. And as we’d discovered after decluttering, we learned that downsizing was incredibly freeing.

For the full-time transition, we moved our “must have” things from the big house in Phoenix to the apartment in Sacramento via one SUV, some airline-checked luggage, and six shipped boxes.

We hired an auction company to sell everything else…and I mean everything. Furniture, artwork, TV, ping-pong table, video game console, books, garage storage racks, appliances. Even both of our vehicles. The auction team prepped, advertised, and sold the lot in one day while we watched it all go down via a video feed from Sacramento. The house that had been full in the morning was empty by nighttime. It was weird and wonderful.

Could we have made more money selling things individually? Sure. But the headaches we saved ourselves during an already stressful time was a more than worthwhile trade.

Me in my writing chair in our Sacramento apartment

When the dust settled, we were nestled in our now familiar apartment in our new city, free of the stuff that was holding us back from doing brave things. We had unknowingly taken our second major step in our nomadic journey—downsizing. I’ll share the next step in part 3. We hope it’s helpful.

Have any downsizing tips or stories? Drop them in the comments! We’d love to hear them. Thanks for reading!