Boomers are afraid to sell the family home and downsize. Can you blame us?

The headline hit me right between the eyes: “BOOMERS SIT TIGHT DESPITE HOUSING CRISIS”.

It made me feel even wearier than I already did. My husband and I are Baby Boomers and we are in the middle of downsizing. As a result, I understand why many of our peers – despite social pressure, nasty headlines and even tax incentives – are finding it hard to take the plunge.

Jane Caro: “We may have lost possessions but we have gained freedom.”Credit: ISTOCK

We bought our now four-bedroom house in 1989, when we had a toddler and another baby on the way. Back then it had two bedrooms, was unrenovated since it was built in 1927, and was in a bit of a sad state: the water from the kitchen sink, we discovered later, had been pouring straight under the house for years. But it had a big and sunny, if unkempt, backyard and loads of potential. What we didn’t have in money we had in energy, enthusiasm and youth. We were primed for the challenge of a fixer-upper.

Thirty-five years later, our old California bungalow has been well and truly fixed up, and our two daughters are grown, married, with children and mortgages of their own. Rattling about like a pair of ageing acorns, we took heed of the arguments for downsizing and made our decision. As we put our house on the market and went looking for something smaller, we even allowed ourselves to get a bit excited.

Six weeks in and I now understand why so many baulk at the idea of selling the family home. I’m not saying I regret the decision, but the whole process has been much more daunting than I imagined.

The first and most physically demanding phase has been the sheer enormity of sorting and clearing out three-plus decades of accumulated stuff, including a lot that our children have “allowed” us to store for them. But I can’t blame them. I am a writer and a reader, so I have accumulated far too many books. My solution to any decorating problem is to shove in a bookshelf and fill it.

Two trips to the Lifeline book depository with more than 35 boxes of reading matter per trip has convinced me to join a library. We also sent boxes of DVDs and CDs, and bags full of clothes to charity.

All of life is a process of gaining and losing, an ebb and flow between various stages and demands. Growing older is no different.

JANE CARO

In some ways, it felt good to shed so much, but it was also backbreaking and, oddly, sad. Not because I was sentimental about any of the endless bumf and knick-knacks (including 35 scented candles, not one of which had seen a match), but because of what they symbolised.

All of life is a process of gaining and losing, an ebb and flow between various stages and demands. Growing older is no different. I have lost one career and gained another. I have lost my children as children and gained them as adults, not to mention their children as grandchildren. I have lost some of that energy and enthusiasm I had when we first moved into our misnamed “forever house”, but I have gained a little wisdom along the way, not least to accept that it’s fine to get people to help you. I also have a little more money to pay them now.

But, until I sat filling yet another box with the contents of yet another bookshelf, it had not struck me that my life now is about getting smaller. Once, everything seemed to be about expanding: more children, a bigger house, a better-paying job, a promotion, more responsibility, another scented candle. Now it seems to be about contraction: needing less, getting rid of things rather than accumulating them. This is a sobering thought, but it has an upside.

Now my husband and I can concentrate on what we want to do, rather than what we have to do. We don’t need to take up the same amount of room, or resources, or to collect so many objects, with all the responsibility that entails. We may have lost possessions but we have gained freedom.

Jettisoning possessions is also, of course, a rehearsal for the ultimate letting go: that of life itself. But perhaps, if we screw our courage to the sticking place and face the downsizing, we give ourselves a better chance to enjoy the time we have left, rather than remaining a slave to a big house.

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