THE RIGHTSIZING CREDO

Have you ever felt owned by your possessions, or weighed down by your "stuff?" Does the idea of creating a clutter-free home or a simpler living environment sound appealing? Are you looking for a way to make your empty nest feel like a fresh space for a new chapter in life? Are you perhaps scaling back for a happier retirement? If so, Rightsizing Your Life® is for you. [DDET Read More...]

Rightsizing is an approach to simplifying your surroundings while keeping what you need or cherish most. It's a process, not an event, and practically speaking, it leads to simplifying and decluttering, organizing and storing things properly so you can find what you need when you want it. It can even result in redesigning an entire home environment for the way you live now - or aspire to.

Rightsizing is "green" because it involves passing things on to the universe or your family or neighbor, not the landfill. It also involves dealing with emotions that can sabotage sensible decisions about managing what you own. The "Rightsized Life" is one that lives in the now, not the way things were 10 or 20 years ago. It's the ultimate safe harbor where the burdens of coping with the accumulated possessions of a lifetime are lifted, resulting in a feeling of liberation and the truest sense of "home" you may ever know. Welcome.[/DDET]

Creating Your New Nest
Everyday Rightsizing

Is The Housing Recession Finally Over?

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Everybody felt it…no matter how remotely associated with the housing industry.  The Recession of 2oo8 hit not only giant homebuilders, contractors, and suppliers of homebuilding materials, but your local hardware store, neighborhood real estate agent, and certainly anyone wishing to sell or buy a home to prepare for downsizing their domestic life.

It hit the business of speaking to audiences about these issues very hard, which certainly included yours truly.  It is so exciting recently to  feel a definite uptick in people being able to make important life decisions about their housing needs.  About eighteen months ago, our Life Events Media company began to receive queries from companies like Shea Homes out west and others in the midwest and eastern seaboard inviting me to come talk to their clients about the art and science of “rightsizing” their lives.  In the last year, alone, I’ve spoken in Chicago, Alabama, Maryland, Washington DC, Massachusetts, and most recently, at the beautiful Shea Homes Rio Vista development in the Sacramento Delta region in my home state of California.

What has been so rewarding is the eagerness with which the audiences appear ready to embrace the notion that simplifying their surroundings is a good thing…not some sort of “downgrade.”  After everything so many people went through as a result of that horrendous shakeup of the U.S. economy, folks seem to have come to the conclusion that making their lives less encumbered with “stuff” was actually liberating!  We live our life in chapters, and a new chapter where houses are filled with only the possessions we use and love has gained strong appeal.

But where to start that simplification to get to “what matters most?”  That will be the subject of a future series of posts.

Watch this space!

Rightsizing Your Home– with a Tag Sale

Even the so-called “Rightsizing Queen” has dirty little secrets like millions of other Americans who put the stuff they can’t use currently in an off-site storage locker. I’ve had one since our “empty nest” family moved from 4000 sq. ft. in Southern California to our current 1200 sq. ft.-and-holding in the San Francisco Bay Area…..Read More

Rightsizing at a Writers’ Conference

Fall and Spring in lovely settings–that’s pretty much the routine when it comes to holding writers’ conferences, and the Scribblers’ Retreat is no exception!  Held quarterly, the next one is November 10-14  at the King and Prince Beach and Golf Resort –shown here–on gorgeous St. Simons Island, Georgia and features both fiction and nonfiction writers, such as yours….Read More

But Little Joey Made It!

There are certain objects in life you pretty much keep forever.  My son’s little handprint mashed into clay held paper clips on my desk for years  Now that we’re living in a 1000 square foot cottage overlooking San Francisco Bay, it’s wrapped in tissue in a box with a knit suit he wore on his….Read More

Radio for Rightsizers

For many years, I made the majority of my living as a health and lifestyle commentator and reporter for KABC Radio & TV in Southern California.  In fact, for 17 years, I rose at 4:45a.m. each morning, read three newspapers, wrote two ninety-second stories and broadcast them “live” from 5:00 to 9:00a.m. from my home….Read More