I’ve been so busy promoting Rightsizing Your Life for three solid years, that I couldn’t get it together to finally clear out things I haven’t set eyes upon in all that time.

So!  This month I finally bit the bullet and dragged out boxes and boxes of our earthly possessions that had been packed professionally by the moving company my husband’s firm had chosen, and which we had left in storage because we’d “rightsized” into our current charming cottage that didn’t have room for the seven couches I once owned…

Over the last decade, we’ve whittled things down to what remained in the off-site storage, and when I brought it all into the light of day, I decided to band together with some near neighbors and hold the “Mother of ALL tag sales.”

Well, here’s some wisdom gleaned from our Rightsizing Household Sale & Flea Market adventures this past weekend:

Step 1: pull out all the stuff from your closets and anything that’s in off-site storage and see what you’ve got.

Step 2:  Beg a frind who was in retail to help you realistically price your goods–or look it up on Craigslist or eBay.  Example:  I thought a Ralph Lauren jacket I’d worn as a TV anchor was worth at least $25; my friend Linda, here, said, “Ciji, this is used merchandise. I’m tagging it $2.50.” I gulped and let her do it. I also wore a fanny pack to keep my money close at hand (I had change for $200 in 20s,10s, 5s, and ones) and then never worried if it was safe during the sale.

Step 3: Combine with other near neighbors and share the expense of making clear, readable signs, as well as sending a “Save the Date” email to all your friends a week before the sale, and a “Sale Reminder” two days before the Saturday you plan to hold the event.You can also run ads in local papers or on Craigslist.

Step 4: Having your “sale partners” nearby means sending business in both directions! Our group also went in on a $85 permit charged by our city; a “donation” to a nearby church to use their parking lot for customers; supplies to make our signs and “Stop Here” helium balloons.

Step 5: For big items,  just display pictures–as I did with our oval glass dining room table you see here–so you don’t have to drag it out to the site of your sale,  assemble it, and worry about  having to disassemble it if it doesn’t sell.  (At $250, my glass table didn’t garner any interest except from a lady who wondered if I would be willing to “cut it down to fit my niece’s breakfast room.” I politely declined, muttering to myself, “That table originally retailed for $1500! –which gives you some idea of depreciation of consumer goods in America…)

Step 6: We had lots of compliments about our tidy displays that were off the ground. I had a 6 foot folding table and borrowed two others, plus used an old round patio table, covering them all in cheap black cotton sheets for a “uniform” look.  I also borrowed a black plastic bookshelf from one of my friends putting stuff in my sale. Each person was in charge of getting payment for her stuff from browsing customers.

Step 7: Be cheerful, friendly (including dogs, in the town I live), and don’t be offended when someone offers you a tenth of what the price is.  We grouped some “Items under $1.00″ and made sure the titles to the books were facing out so people could grab what they wanted. One friend and her brother send books to our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and so we gave them a few extra for free. We felt good the books would actually get read again, and they felt good that we’d been modestly “generous.” Win-win all around.

Step 8: Put brand name merchandise up front and ‘plumped”– like this Burberry tartan purse, and the red Liz Clairborn I bought and never once used. Be sure everything is marked and be prepared to happily discuss “offers.”

Step 9: Be sure to display “like-with-like” as you see pictured below with the two mirrors that were on sale.  The big one from ZGallerie (and cost about $100 originally) sold for $25; the white one ended up in our Salvation Army “post-garage sale” pick-up, which we’d pre-arranged for the Monday after the sale.  Goodwill Industries and many other charities offer the same service, but you must bundle things properly in plastic bags or boxes, and in good conscience, pass on only what is usable to the next person in the Universe…

Step 10: When all else fails, there’s always a “FREE TO A GOOD HOME” section that gets a lot of laughs and engenders goodwill with your potential customers. Believe it or not, I unloaded two dozen Harvard mugs from a charity event held in 1985!  I kid you not!

Post script: And as my dear co-Rightsizing cohorts pointed out, we had fun trying to out do each other with the craziest items we were each selling (Susan won hands down with her plastic fish “water feature” never out of the box), and how we each found things in each other’s sales that we couldn’t live without–to wit: Leigh’s howl of pleasure when she found a coffee grinder she was going to use for chopping herbs and a very swell-looking “Island hat.” After expenses, each household netted about $300! Not bad, and we liberated ourselves from the burden of possessions we no longer needed, wanted, or suited the lifestyle we are living today!

Let me know about your “Rightsizing Tag Sale” adventures.  Hope you have as much fun and profit as we did.

I just got the promotional material that kindly said:  ”Ciji Ware, veteran of all forms of print and electronic media, will talk about “New Publishing Trends–or–How I Survived as a Scribe.” Certainly a timely topic, given the revolution (and convolutions) going on in the print and publishing worlds, and when visitors to this Rightsizing Your Life site—-or the one that promotes my novels–click from page to page, they can certainly deduce that the main message I probably want to convey at the writers’ conference is going to be:  writers keep writing–no matter what!

That is how one gets to be a “veteran.”  As my sainted late father, mid-century popular writer Harlan Ware, used to say about producing reams of material over his professional writing career, “Writers write.  They don’t make excuses. They put the seat of their pants on the chair and their hands on the keyboard and they keep typing!”

And if you’re me, you start at about 9a.m. at least five days a week, as you can see from the image of my former (very messy and pre-rightsized) office on the right.  In recent years, we’ve downsized from an original 4000 square feet of living space in Southern California to a 950 square foot cottage and a guesthouse-office of about 300 square feet in the San Francisco Bay Area.  And even though my office these days is an armoire, as you see below, I still have that keyboard and I still keep typing. When you’re a “rightsized author,”  size does NOT matter.

Maybe “Writers Write” should be inscribed within view of every would-be novelist or scribe.  If you click on the “Ciji’s Covers” page on my author website cijiware.com that displays the eight books I’ve written, you’ll see what can come from being consistent. To earn my keep, besides nonfiction books and six historical novels,  I’ve also written two screenplays (neither so far produced), a play (produced in my home town), magazines, news, television, and radio copy, online articles for the web, e-books, e-guides-–you name it, I’ve typed it!

I usually mention this variety of writing projects when I speak publicly, and offer forth other bits of wisdom from my father who wrote screenplays, novels, a biography, short stories, and for fourteen of its twenty-seven years on the air, the radio classic One Man’s Family: “The best way to be a writer who can pay the light bill is to pretend you work for the phone company. Be  Jack-of-all-trades in the field. Punch the clock, day in, day out.”

Not every budding writer wants to hear this message of how to survive as a professional scribe.  They want to write “when the spirit moves them….”  or when their head is full of vibrant, fabulous ideas.  And that’s fine, if writing is a hobby.  But if it’s a living, there’s only one way to survive, and that’s to, as they say in the Nike commercial:  ”Just DO it!”

When I taught as an adjunct professor at the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program,  I had 17 members in my first class, and only one of them finished a book.  The next year’s class–same thing. One person completed her manuscript and the rest of the class never crossed the finish line.  I was worried that perhaps I wasn’t the greatest teacher, but the supervisor running the program looked up my student evaluations and said, “No…you got great marks from your class.  It’s just they never understood–until they took your class–how hard it can be to write a book, to say nothing of getting it published.”

Apparently, nearly every lawyer would like to be a John Grisham or a New York Times bestselling nonfiction author, but few have the stamina to work as hard at the writing craft as Grisham has.  Hundreds of people over the years have said to me, “Oh….I’d love to write a book, if only I had the time,” or “I know a great book that you should write!”

I haven’t spoken before a full-fledged writers conference for quite some time, lecturing mostly these days about my nonfiction work Rightsizing Your Life:  Simplifying Your Surroundings While Keeping What Matters Most. But now that all my historicals are being reissued with wonderful covers from Sourcebooks Landmark–and my first new historical novel in a decade will be published next April–it’s going to be interesting to see if audiences of fledgling authors who “love to write” have changed at all, especially as it has become tougher and tougher to earn one’s living in the Digital Age.

I’ll let you know how it goes….

If that makes me in an imperfect rightsizer, so be it!

But the boxes of his artwork from age two to thirteen? (He’s a video tape editor and professional photographer…no watercolors for him!)

Most of the sweet little squiggles went into the recycle bin in the course of our several moves since he graduated from college and has set out on his own life in New York City.  Yes, I felt a lump in my throat when I sent those memories on their way–and I still do when I think about it.  Nevertheless, we could not keep carrying around boxes of this kind of “memorabilia” and our son didn’t want it either!

Disposing of sentimental objects is among one of the hardest tasks of rightsizing your life.  However, some of the same options apply to this kind of emotion-laden possessions as to the rest of your holdings.

• Offer the “collection” to the ‘artist’ first.
• Save a few of the “best” and put them in a labeled folder to file.
• Photograph the cutest remaining artwork and file it or create an album for a future gift.
• Have your own little “farewell” ceremony before releasing it.
• If the artist is still a child, dispose of what you must in private. (You don’t want to demotivate any budding Michaelangelo).

Not too long ago, I was going through some of the last boxes of things from our “big” move from Los Angeles to San Francisco and stumbled across my son’s High School letter jacket when he was a champion long-distance runner.  I immediately took it to FedEx Ground and dispatched it to the home he now shares with his adorable new bride.

Here’s what I received by email with the subject line: GOING STEADY!

Does this make a rightsizer feel great, or what?

During those nearly two decades of broadcasting, I saw a lot of changes take place in my profession–as in many industries that have been impacted by the Digital Revolution. (The auto, publishing, real estate, travel businesses come to mind….)

At any rate, I was able to change-and-adapt within the media world, and to my amazement, so has radio!

Recently, I’ve been asked to appear as a guest on a number of “BlogRadio” shows where you speak to the hosts via telephone.  The hour-long show goes out over the Internet in real time, or is taped for future airing.  It is also “archived” so listeners can retrieve the show at times convenient to their schedules and listen whenever they want!

What a great concept!

One of the liveliest BlogRadio programs shows I’ve done is The Empty Nesters, hosted by Claudia Brown and Jill Fromer, two women living in Southern California who are adjusting to their children no longer living in their homes.  When I did the show on August 25, which is still available in their archive–should you be so inclined to hear it–we had a sensational sixty minutes full of laughter, Rightsizing tips, and the wonderful, hard-won wisdom from people who have really lived through the experiences they’re talking about.

“Rightsizing” is so much more than the square footage you live in, though we certainly covered a few pointers about the task of sifting through your possessions so you can end up with the “best-of-the-best” of what you own that suits your age, stage, and current living situation.

What Jill and Claudia and I began to drill down on was the notion of thinking hard about what we “women of a certain age” (and men, too) want for the Next Chapter in our lives, now that the children have flown the nest and we don’t exactly need a closet full of soccer balls, broken croquet mallets, or even clothing in our closets we haven’t worn (or fit in to) for years. And what do we do with the things that no longer serve our needs?  We talked about how to dispose of them in a “green,” responsible fashion, or pass them on to the universe in a way that forestalls the wrenching emotions sometimes experienced when we get rid of a grown child’s art work, or boxes of papers that represent a professional life that no longer exists.

Blog Radio is certainly beginning to fill some pretty specialized niches.  What’s great is that there are shows on just about any topic you can name:  business, lifestyle issues, spirituality, and certainly “how to rightsize your life!”

If you haven’t had a chance to see what’s out there on the Web, put a topic into your Search Box and then add  the words “blog radio” and see what comes up. And then you can listen to it whenever you want.

Take it from a veteran broadcaster (Oh, do I wish I still looked like this picture!):  it’s the wave of the future, and for rightsizers, you don’t even need to own a radio!

This picture was sent by an architect named Charles Durrett of McCamant & Durrett, designers of owner-planned communities–known as cohousing communities– where each household has its own “space,” but where many other aspects of daily life and home-owning are shared.  I interviewed Chuck back in 2006 when I was researching the book that came to be called Rightsizing Your Life:  Simplifying Your Surroundings While Keeping What Matters Most.

At the time, I was in reporter mode and still in the stage of defining what “rightsizing” was, how it differed from plain ‘ol “downsizing,”  and who was actually–and consciously–simplifying their lives in terms of both their living space and the ways in which they were chosing what to keep and what to eliminate from their surroundings.

The picture above shows the steering committee of a new cohousing group formed in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and apparently, Chuck often suggests that the core planning groups he consults for read Rightsizing as they embark on such a major life change.

Doing that and sending me the picture all this time later was really dear of him, but I think it also speaks to the point that ‘rightsizing” is a definitely process, not an event.  It doesn’t happen in one, fell swoop, either.  And whatever age we may be, it is a conscious, practical, and psychological evolution in the way we live our lives.

As I discovered doing the book and interviewing virtually scores of people all over America, rightsizing as I define it in the “Rightsizing Credo” on this blog, is an approach that enables us to create new surroundings that will profoundly impact  the way we  feel and behave. And whether the “new surroundings” turn out to be cohousing or an “active adult” community, a cottage, cabin, condo, or an “upsized” single family dwelling, as Lance Armstrong said, “It’s not about the bike!”

And it’s not merely about the square footage of your living space, as I certainly learned while interviewing Chuck in the course of tracking down the incredible variety of people ready and wanting to rightsize their lives.  It’s about discovering for yourself what’s right for you at your age, stage, and situation.  

I can’t even remember, now, how I first encountered Chuck and his wife and partner, Katie McCamant, but I wanted to learn more about the CoHousing movement and  every time I mentioned the subject, their names surfaced.  And of course, they turned out to be a tremendous source of information about this burgeoning lifestyle choice that requires, of necessity, that participants simplify their surroundings and bring with them to their new communities only the household possessions they use and love.

I soon found out that Chuck and Katie have been key players in the cohousing movement since the very beginning and responsible for many of the cohousing communities that have been built all over the country for seniors who want their own private living areas, but also desire to part of a community populated with kindred spirits.  Some of the cohousing communities are age defined, others are deliberately inter-generational.

This year in some very beautiful places, McCamant & Durrett, architects, are holding a series of workshops for people interested in finding out more about cohousing–what it is, and how to achieve it in their own, chosen communities.  If this is something that appeals to you as you think about rightsizing your life, you can check out the series of cohousing informational meetings coming up during September and beyond.

If you feel like spending a little time in Boulder, Colorado or Big Sur, California, (shown above), and learning about building a community from the ground up, I say go for it!

Well, if the idyll of lounging in lawn chairs isn’t within reach these days (and even if it is), the inspiring thing about rightsizing your life comes from having less to worry about, less to take care of, less to polish, dust, repair, or refurbish.

As many who have been through the rightsizing process will tell you:  less can actually mean more! More time, less stress, more money saved, less stress, a more manageable life, less stress…well you get the idea.

One of the key categories on the Rightsizing Your Life website is decluttering.  The goal, of course, is methodically to sift through the possessions clogging your life to cull out only the best-of-the-best and then responsibly dispose of the rest. But take it from a veteran:  we tend to procrastinate and ignore the “methodical” part altogether until a major life event triggers an equally major shift in lifestyle–rarely anticipated or voluntary.

Empty nesters often look forward to the moment the kids leave for or have graduated from college.  But then there are other situations that are not as pleasant:  a career is winding down–or has tanked completely.  Then there are the home foreclosures or the owners forced to sell a house in a short sale. A divorce, or the death of a loved one can also initiate  abrupt changes.

It can be truly overwhelming to be dealing with some serious “bumps in the road” when also faced with a personal environment awash with unwanted, unneeded, unusuable stuff.

But here’s the good news:  whatever is prompting you to seek more serenity and ease in your life, rightsizing –– rather than downsizing –– could be just the antidote to the understandable anxiety of wondering what the next chapter will look like  in terms of size, atmosphere and amenities and what are the steps to achieving the surroundings that will feel right for me?

Before any of these sometimes scarey questions prompt your thoughts to spiral downwards, think “Liberation!” Falling into the downsizing dumps can be avoided if you begin to take some simple measures to eliminate–and, yes, liberate– from your household (and even your life) anything you don’t currently use and love.  It’s just that simple

Take it from those who’ve walked down the rightsizing path ahead of you, there are huge benefits awaiting you, evidence of which you can see on the left.  This is the same  garage as above–rightsized.  There were obviously a number of steps taken to get there, but it wasn’t rocket science ,and a workaday knowledge of “best practices”  which you’ll find on this website, you too, can find such “liberation.”

Achieving freedom from being ruled by  possessions allows the rightsizer to focus on what really matters and frees up time and space to do the things you really want to do in life.

But how to get there, you ask?  Some answers are offered at our next we rendezvous….

The good news is: taking a “glass half-full” approach can become strangely full of promise for many who are making a lifestyle transition from big to smaller living quarters, and from way-too-much stuff to “just right” when it comes to paring down their possessions at midlife and beyond.

The sweet cottage on the left was the solution for a couple in California who had bought their “trophy house” when the Dot Com frenzy was at its height. Now, with the kids grown, their high-salaried jobs gone with the wind, and relentless maintenance costs gobbling up their nest egg, they took a very large leap of faith and decided to “downsize.”

They sold the big house, banked a chunk of change, and moved back into this little house they’d kept rented out from their newlywed days. At first the wife had a major case of the “downsizing downers.”  She was inconsolable about losing her state-of-the-art kitchen and worried about what the neighbors thought of their “come down.” Then her husband suggested that they buy a 55-foot barge to float down the canals of France a couple of months a year so he could paint landscapes and she could roam the farmers markets, whipping up wonderful al fresco meals as they drifted through the bucolic countryside.

Sounds pretty pricey and out of reach for most fifty-somethings, yes?    The “Phaedra” cost less than a luxury RV and had twice the charm.  Not only that, the husband is actually selling his paintings when he comes back to home base, and the wife designed a professional move management business she shuts down when she’s away, and relaunches as soon as she’s back in her cottage!  

Presto! They’d gone from a downsizing downer to a “rightsizing” scenario, keeping only the possessions they loved and used in this new, adventurous chapter of their lives.

It’s All About Attitude

Always loved gardening? If you’re thinking about rightsizing your life, keep the gardening tools, but perhaps recycle your old briefcases to a job-training organization and donate the battered luggage you formerly used when your job required three business junkets a month to a women’s shelter. You’ve got a new life and your stuff should reflect that!

Are baseball cards your passion? Or has the thrill-of-the-chase passed you by and now you’re seriously interested in adding to your grandchild’s college fund? Sell the cards on eBay and buy that savings bond to put in someone’s stocking next holiday.

But what if the “fear factor” about letting go of things–be they possessions, symbols of a former way of life, or just plain “stuff.”  More on that next time.

And in this era of tight money and worries about where the next paycheck is coming from, the notion of just going out to buy a big ticket item like a sofa or dining room sideboard just isn’t on these days.

The Old Couch

But life never remains static, and the homes we live in—whether owned or leased–continually need maintenance, some refurbishment, and a little pizzazz, if only to cheer us up a bit.

Case in point:

These chairs have been part of our lives in six different houses. Men like them because they’re roomy; women like them because they feel surrounded by comfort. The chairs’ last resting place was in front of a huge picture window that got both direct sun and reflections off water. But “Houston, we have a problem.”

When the chairs were last transported to a new abode, the upholstery literally disintegrated in the mover’s hands.

Worn Out Fabric

Even so, we lived with them in this state for nearly a year while we recovered from the cost of our latest “rightsized” move to a 1000 sq. ft. cottage-by-the-sea with a small guest house/office nearby.

The first estimates I got for slipcovers from friends who used decorators were nearly $1000 a piece! Then I went to a discount fabric store and found the fabric I wanted at $8.95 a yard (reduced from $24.95 a yard), which came to $179, since I needed 20 yards for the two chairs.

After I’d paid for the fabric at the checkout, I noticed a bulletin board where business cards left by several “home sewers” who did slipcovers were thumb tacked in hopes that prospective customers would pick them up. A couple of slipcover makers had websites that showed their past commissions.

This was how I found Hester Michael, whose work was impeccable (she also designs and makes costumes for Renaissance Faire fanatics). She produced two perfect slipcovers in about two weeks’ time using the old ones as patterns.

Our Great New Slipcovers

And the bill? $250 per chair in time and labor! She was happy, we were happy, and our nest had a brand-new look.

Thanks to a little research on my part–and shopping for the yardage myself–we love the shot-in-the-arm these favorite old chairs now give our cozy, “rightsized” living room.

And it didn’t break the bank.