The complete holiday wish list of a downsizing caregiver

More time with loved ones, near and far,
and someone to vacuum out the car.

iRecycle: the app that my sister (almost) invented

The Keurig coffee maker was the first thing to leave the curb, picked up by a guy on roller blades. We peered from behind the curtains in the front window and watched him read the disclaimer, written in sharpie marker and taped to the box by my very honest sister: "This was given to us by a friend second-hand. We think it probably works, but we never actually tried it. Good luck." I don't know who had higher hopes, the roller-blader with the free find, or my sister, who was on a downsizing binge. She had gathered kitchen gadgets, clothes no longer in favor, sewing fabric, and miscellaneous items from closets, put them all out on the curb with an enticing FREE STUFF sign, and posted an alert on Craigslist. We felt like household goods adoption agents, monitoring the bonding between items and the passers by, but keeping a respectful distance so as not to jeopardize the attachment process. By the end of the day, even the single mugs had found new homes. We were left with a printer with a crooked paper feed, (the disclaimer having probably been too much information in this case), and a few other odds and ends.

Passionate about diverting things from the waste stream, my sister knew exactly where to take the leftovers to increase their chances of being reused or properly recycled. She knew which thrift stores in her community would be likely to resell clothes versus dishes, where to take the electronic waste, and where to donate the leftover craft supplies. Recognizing that not everyone is as obsessed or committed to this cause as she is, she proposed, "Redistribution needs to be easier for people...people aren't against recycling or repurposing, they just don't know what to do with their stuff...they don't have time to spend doing the research...they use up all their energy just making the decision to finally get rid of something, and at that point, they just need a quick solution for disposal... " And then the lightbulb went off, and for the next few hours, two low-tech sisters thought they had invented an App to save the planet.

While reading a magazine the following week, I discovered that we weren't the first people to think of this. It already exists.  iRecycle is available for iOS and Android, or at Earth911on the internet if you are still using a computer. It's easy to use! Enter your zip code, enter the item you are ready to recycle or redistribute, and find your local recycling centers.

You may be very familiar with the resources in your own community, but keep this in mind if you ever find yourself cleaning out the household of a faraway family member.  I wish I had known of this a few years ago...

Let your fingers do the walking

We seem to get a new batch of phone books at least quarterly here, and with competing phone companies and multiple publishers, they accumulate quickly. I just found a 2007 edition under the stack of three 2010-11's, and we didn't even move here until 2009.

With our internet dependence and the increasing intelligence of cell phones, the usefulness of even the most current phone books is debatable, but I still refer to them frequently, and I know for a fact that I am not alone. When Opa and I settled into our new place, I opted for an unlisted number, so that incoming calls would be limited to friends and family who understand our increasingly nocturnal schedule and the unpredictability of sleep in a household where dementia has taken up residence. This completely backfired when a phone book printing error resulted in a flood of urgent calls at all hours from people who found our number misplaced as a local business listing. They sought consultation for septic system and drainage problems, and though caregiving had certainly increased my focus on issues related to plumbing, my trouble-shooting expertise was quite personalized, and I had absolutely nothing to offer the callers other than someone else's phone number.  

Today's downsize challenge is to gather up your out-of-date directories. Your phone book should have a "recycling guide" section that tells you where to put them. In some parts of the country, you will only receive a printed phone book if you ask for one. If you would rather not receive any in the future, click here to opt out of yellow pages delivery by entering your zip code.

 Let your fingers do the walking, right over to the recycling bin.

Where have all the flowers gone? (the case of the empty vase)

empty vases from under the sink...

Opa has always loved having flowers in the house. We are lucky to have a yard with mature gardens that offer many blooms throughout the summer season. The only thing that brings him more joy than arranging them these days is taking their pictures.

When Oma was still alive, bringing home a bouquet from the grocery store, (or sometimes two if they were on sale), carefully measuring and trimming the ends, and displaying them in a vase on the coffee table was part of his weekly routine. After 95 years of birthdays and 68 anniversaries, they were not lacking for empty vases, baskets, or other containers to hold them.

When tackling the pantry, where they were precariously stacked inside each other in topple-over, accident- potentially-requiring-sutures, waiting-to-happen fashion, Mom led the initiative. This was a great place to begin downsizing because it wasn't emotionally loaded. (Generally a good starting point when facing the dismantling of an entire household.) We cleaned, sorted, and boxed up the lot, (at least a dozen baskets, two boxes full of vases, and quite a few holiday themed ceramics) then drove them to the florist who had originally made the deliveries. If they were less than delighted to receive them, they were great fakers.

This week, I decided to do the same with the small collection that was starting to gather under the kitchen sink in our current home. It was a great outing for us and Opa came home with a prize.

Today's Downsize Challenge is to take inventory of your empty vases and make new arrangements for the extras. Personally, as long as I have one thing big enough to hold peonies during the week in June when they bloom, and another thing small enough to hold the daisies, I feel well prepared.

This challenge should be fairly easy on you. Many florists around the country have initiated vase recycling programs. Some even offer discounts or store credit for your return. If your local florist has not thought of this yet, your inquiry might really start something. Please do take the extra few minutes to clean them first. I don't have a dishwasher, but soak mine in dish detergent in the sink to get them in prime condition for reuse. The baskets used for flower arrangements can be re-used too.  If your favorite florist won't take them back, consider finding a new favorite. As for the little water tubes, they might accept those for re-use too, but if not, notice their potential role in other areas of the house.  A few have found new careers in my sewing basket (great as needle holders, for bead storage, etc) and tool box (perfect for little nails and small hardware). And remember, glass and plastic can usually be recycled if all attempts at redistribution fail.

Opa's smile shows the power of a single flower, so pick one today for somebody you love. Don't worry about the vase. There's sure to be one in the utility closet somewhere...

Was blind, but now I see...

One nut, two screws, three detached temples, and after four years out of commission, a five minute repair job has my collection of drugstore sunglasses back in action! I knew this day would come eventually, which is what I remember telling myself when I packed up the various pieces from the junk drawer in my old apartment last year and opted to pack them into a U-Haul instead of throwing them away. "I'll get around to fixing them sometime..."

I assumed this would be an easy task once I stopped procrastinating, and since the sunglasses were of the inexpensive non-prescription variety, it was certainly going to be a do it yourself operation.  Like most of those, it should have been easier than it was, took significantly longer than it should have, and involved more than one trip to a store for parts. If you've attempted this task yourself recently, you probably discovered that it's hard to find tiny screws without a minimum purchase that includes a 4-way screwdriver with magnifier that you don't need, (because you already have two in a desk drawer someplace), wrenches that don't fit the nuts, and 4 screws that turn out to be too big or too small to be useful. The kit cost me just one dollar and eighty-eight cents; but was worth less than that, so it's now in the junk drawer where the glasses used to be.

A "Fix all glasses/ eyeglass repair kit" that I ordered online for seven dollars finally gave me what I needed to repair the glasses from the junk drawer, and any others I will ever own in the future. It came with lots of different sized screws, which was good, because I lost quite a few of them when I bumped my elbow on the table while opening the package. Even with many of the nuts and screws lost forever in the carpet, there were still enough to do the job, and three pair of sunglasses have avoided the trash. But what about other glasses we have around the house that are no longer being used? Reading glasses that have been replaced by a stronger magnification...My old prescription lenses from the nineties with frames that cover three-quarters of my face....What can be done with those???

This week's downsize challenge is to take inventory of your eye glasses; Sunglasses, reading glasses, old prescription glasses, etc. Fix what can be fixed, and consider donating what you don't need or want anymore. Even old sunglasses that you have replaced with a cooler pair; they will find their way to people near the equator, where eye protection is hard to come by, and UV rays cause serious vision loss. The following organizations collect, refurbish, and redistribute glasses of all kinds:

New eyes for the needy
OneSight
Lions club


We have one pair of glasses in the house that I am not quite ready to donate. Family photo albums confirm my memory that my Oma wore the same frames for at least thirty-five years.  They were big, round bi-focals, and I don't think you could find anything like them in a store today. I remember the specific morning when I first learned the Dutch word "brill" while I was helping her get dressed. She asked me to get them from the dresser, along with her wristwatch. It was during the last six months of her life, when she began letting me help her with daily tasks, and I began making a more concerted effort to learn her language while we still had time together. Oma would stop in the middle of whatever we were doing, point to an object, say the word, and patiently wait while I would repeat it over and over until I had it right. I remember quietly setting those glasses on the dresser after taking them off for the last time. When I hold them in my hands now, I can still see her bright blue eyes behind them, saying so much that didn't need to be translated.

The biggest surprise

When I was talking with New York Times contributor Paula Span recently about the experience of cleaning out the condo, she asked me a great question: "What was the biggest surprise?" Nothing specific came to mind right away. It had been nearly a year since I'd locked that door for the last time, and my mind was cluttered with more current things, but a few weeks after the conversation, the memory of it suddenly hit me.

I had found the biggest surprise in the drawer of Opa's bedside table, underneath the index cards with illustrated directions for how to connect the High-8 video camera to the TV and VCR, a neatly folded sheet of typed lyrics for the Star Spangled Banner, five flashlights that didn't work, his stash of double-salt licorice, and a lot of miscellaneous batteries. It was inside of a small blue box with foreign writing on it that didn't look like Dutch to me. I mindlessly opened it, figuring that it was probably another "gift" that had come in the mail from some charity; another calculator or clock or something along those lines. I was two months into the clean-out process at that point, I thought I knew everything there was to know about the contents of the two bedrooms and their respective closets, but to find myself holding an Italian tear gas pistol came as a complete shock to me.

The biggest surprise

When I asked him about it, Opa said, "Oh, that's my revolver. It's for if someone breaks in at night."  I sat there trying to imagine a scenario in which my 95 year old grandfather, who has the steadiest, but largest hands I have ever seen, would successfully load teeny tiny tear gas caps, in the dark, without his glasses on, into this pistol, after first finding it underneath all the other stuff that was on top of it in the drawer.

Then I thought about all the nights during the previous four years when I had stayed up late after flying down for my long weekend visits, waiting for my grandparents to fall asleep so that I could sneak into the kitchen to reload the dishwasher with the dishes that had been put away dirty, sort through the contents of kitchen cabinets to find the source of rancid odors, and dump expired bottles of Thousand Island salad dressing down the garbage disposal. I began to imagine the story that might have run in the Herald Tribune if Opa's hearing loss had not been so profound, "Woman in pantry, surrounded by outdated boxes of Rice-a-Roni, teargassed by her grandfather who mistook her for an intruder..."

Opa is one of the most trusting people I have ever met, which is what made the discovery so hard to believe. If the pistol had been in the drawer on my grandmother's side of the bed, it would have all made so much more sense to me, but the people who have known Opa throughout his life agree that he'd be far more inclined to offer a burglar a cup of tea than to respond with self-defense.

He did not remember where he had bought the gun, or when, but my aunt put the pieces of the story together. She had lived in Uganda with her husband and young children between 1967-69. During a period of frequent break-ins and politic strain, they were advised to obtain tear gas for their personal safety. This wasn't something they could easily purchase locally, so they wrote to Opa for help. She didn't know that he'd bought one for himself too, but that must have been what happened. Neither of the weapons were ever fired.

While I was on the phone hearing the rest of the story, Opa sat at the kitchen table, wearing the coffee stained shirt that I hadn't been able to get him to change all week. Someone on The Price is Right was bidding on the showcase. As I watched him carefully sorting paper clips into neat piles of different sizes and colors, I could see it all so clearly, the X-Acto knife he'd used to cut the pages out of the center of a hardcover edition of Reader's Digest Collected Stories, the hours of letting the glue dry around the section that would hold the pistol, the long drive in his '66 Dodge Dart to a post office out of town, the fake return address, the successful smuggling operation. His strong desire to protect the people he loves; a lump rising in my throat. After I hung up the phone, I swallowed hard and said the only thing I could think of,  "Opa, would you like to go out for ice cream after lunch?"

When it no longer suits you

Suit jacket made by Opa's friend Mau in the 70's

Eighty-five years ago, Opa and his friend Mau were twelve year old boys playing in the streets of Amsterdam, riding bikes, going to the movies, and camping along the North Sea. By the time I knew them as retired old men sitting in lawn chairs on the beach, their friendship had survived a World War, immigration, and over fifty years of telling the same jokes. Mau grew up to be a tailor, and every few decades Opa would have a new suit made by his oldest friend.

When I was clearing out the wardrobe closet in Florida last spring, it was packed with every dress my grandmother had worn since immigration in 1957, (in a full range of sizes), purses and shoes in at least seven shades of beige, zippered bathrobes in every imaginable length and material, multiple pairs of identical slacks ("Buy one, get another half-off"), winter coats that hadn't been worn since the move from Massachusetts in the mid-eighties, an array of sun visors, and so much more. A woman's clothes are so occasional; the dress she wore to the fiftieth anniversary party when they hired that polka band... .the beaded blue two-piece suit from the last Captain's dinner, neatly stored in the dry cleaning bag, optimistically awaiting the next cruise. Cleaning out the closet of a recently departed loved one is overwhelmingly intimate and profoundly lonesome. The scent of familiarity has the power to deeply soothe and wound us in the same breath. I cried both kinds of tears as I sat on the floor of that closet, and the eleven umbrellas Oma had been saving for a rainy day could do nothing to deflect them.

When we would go for our walk to get the mail each afternoon, Opa would inevitably say to the ladies we met along the way, “My wife died. She was about your size. You could come to my house and see if any of her clothes fit you.” He didn't understand why nobody ever followed-up on his offer, so I started sneaking things out to the Goodwill and Salvation Army early in the morning, telling him later that I'd found someone who could really use them, which I desperately hoped was the truth.

When it came time to tackle Opa's side of the closet in preparation for our move, I made him try on everything he owned and we had a fashion show in the living room. We sorted his wardrobe into piles of 'things that fit' and 'things that didn't'. Then we subdivided, eliminating the fabrics that would most easily melt if they caught on fire, and other things we decided were unlikely to be worn by him in his ninety-fifth year (the belt buckles to his square dancing outfits, and the stretched out Speedo bathing suit with the lightening bolt on the backside). I appreciated his utilitarian approach to the process, “Why the hell do I need sixteen pairs of pants when I wear the same ones for a whole week and we have a perfectly good washing machine?” Moments of such clarity must be seized!  The decisions that followed were more straight forward than they would have been if my Oma had still been alive, and believe me, I felt guilty about that. We made one exception to our practical and ruthless purging; Mau's suits. They no longer fit Opa well, and we don't attend many suit-worthy occasions anymore, but after parting with so much already, “My longest- lasting friend made them for me,” seemed like a good enough reason to keep them.  

About six months after we got settled, Opa started to lose track of things that he usually carried in his pockets. My purse started getting overloaded with wadded up handkerchiefs, colored pencils, camera batteries, word search puzzle books, and the other items that travel with us on our daily outings. He needed a bag of his own...So we sent a suit jacket to my sister and she transformed it into the perfect solution, keeping the pockets intact and even reusing the original lining! (Click on the 'Something New' photo below to see her other similar projects.)

Something Old		Something New
Opa's jacket in 1979		Opa's bag in 2011

Opa loves his new bag and tells everyone that it was “twice made” for him. The very same pocket that once held theater tickets and hotel keys now holds a pack of UNO cards and some spare hearing aide batteries, and it's getting a lot more use than it did while it was hanging in the back of the closet for the past twenty years.

What could you do with the beloved things that no longer suit you in their current form?

Spring is a great time to take a look in your closet. The Downsize Challenge this week is to sort through your wardrobe. I invite you to start with the things on hangers if the idea of tackling contents of dresser drawers feels like it will zap your life force. Diverting clothing from the textile waste stream is good for the planet and for the people on it. You probably already have some system in place for downsizing your unwanted clothing. Here are some options to consider:

You can maximize interest in a post on Freecyle or Craigslist by mentioning sizes and materials of what you have to offer (cotton dresses, denim jeans, wool coats, etc) rather than just listing “free clothes”. Don't limit yourself to thinking about the clothes as worthless in their current form. Many craftspeople seek these items for up-cycling projects and will be happy to take them off your hands. The condition may not matter if it is going to be deconstructed. When your old wool sweater has been cut up and felted and turned into something beautiful and new, nobody will ever know about that big hole in the left armpit.

Alterations: Do you still really love it but it needs some adjustment? Could it fit you again after a trip to the seamstress or tailor?

Consignment: Could you get some cash back?  

Donation: To maximize the impact of your local clothing donation, it's best to work seasonally. Your unwanted winter coat is honestly more likely to end up in the dumpster outside of the thrift store if you donate it in July than if you do so in October. Ask your donation center what happens to things that don't get purchased. Some participate in textile recycling programs (like this one in New York City). Others aren't in the loop yet. A lot of clothing goes into our landfills in spite of our best intentions.  (Readers, please post comments with your other resources and ideas.)

If you've got professional clothes in good condition, consider donating to one of several organizations that promote economic independence by providing workplace attire as part of career development programs:

• Dress for Success - for women (check out the affiliates drop down list)
• Career Gear - for men
• National Suit Drive organized by Men's Wearhouse each September
• Wardrobe for Opportunity – in the Bay area in California

But please remember, the recipients are not interviewing for careers as 1990's fashion models, so these clothes must be interview appropriate and IN STYLE.

Got any vintage items of interest? (Not just clothes, think about shoes, accessories, coats, hats, suitcases, parasols?...) A community theater company  in your area might welcome them for their costume shop.

And if you've been holding on to something sentimental from your longest lasting friend, consider how it might be transformed into something new to suit you. One of the keys to healthy downsizing is knowing what you really need to keep.