Divorce Can Be Chance to Clean House, Start with New Possessions for New Life
When her first marriage collapsed, California educator Sherry Knazan instinctively shed more than just a spouse. “He was always, because of his position as the rabbi, concerned about how we looked in the community and about keeping up connections and appearances. For me, that meant doing a lot of volunteering, and spending social time with a lot of people I honestly didn’t really like very much,” she admits.
“So after he moved out, I breathed this huge sigh of relief that I didn’t have to make time for that anymore. I dropped out of things. I think I cocooned myself and my kids because I felt like we’d all been hurt and needed to feel safe. Even dinnertime got a lot more casual. I felt I had no choice but to simplify my life, and that was a good thing.”
If separation becomes sadly inevitable, it also becomes a unique opportunity to clear away the clutter — physical and emotional — that can weigh you down and keep you from going forward. At the point of parting, when one person moves out, couples typically start to downsize — jettisoning the extraneous obligations, social commitments, material possessions, and accumulated residue of shared life. Out with all the stuff they no longer want, assuming, of course, that they every wanted it to begin with.
That dusty 8-track tape collection of his? Grant him full, uncontested custody. The stuffed animal menagerie, featuring that humongous panda her first boyfriend won her at the school carnival? You no longer need to cohabitate with it. The mildewing college textbooks, the space-sapping kitchen appliances, the unused wedding presents, the La-Z-Boy recliner you always despised? Good riddance.
While you may be relieved to foist a lot of stuff back on your spouse — or elated to toss particular items into the Goodwill box or the trash bin — some downsizing may be compulsory. In the brute division of assets, splitting spouses often are forced to sell jewelry, SUVs, and even the roomy suburban family home in order to afford their separate lives.
“A divorce is jarring and forces people to ask themselves ‘Am I living the way I want to be living?’ “ says Cecile Andrews, a Seattle-based guru of the movement who has helped found more than 100 simplicity circles around the country in which participants share their quests for a more minimalist life.
“They have to learn to live on less money, but they can make that more fun,” she says. “It’s a new image of life: ‘ I’m not here for the stuff, for the money or success. Instead I’m here to be true to myself, to be creative, to enjoy my new life.'”
When author Linda Breen Pierce conducted a survey of 211 people attempting to practice simplicity as a lifestyle, she found that separation was a common catalyst.
One example was Tara Millette, a nurse who had spent 13 years striving to be the perfect wife and mother. “With the divorce, almost everything in my life took on a completely different appearance than it ever had before. It was like I had been frantically running around with a blindfold on and then someone had taken the blindfold off. Everything seemed so clear. Material possessions lost all importance,” acknowledges Millette, who ended up renting a small home, furnishing it with second-hand furniture and sewing her own curtains.
Not that dialing down is easy. When another study participant, engineer Kent Honneger lost his job and his marriage ended, he moved into a 700-square-foot Kansas City apartment with his grown son — and found himself chafing at the cramped quarters and lack of privacy. But the more he embraced the precepts of the simplicity movement, the more his outlook brightened.
“I remembered that 30 years ago I had little money or possessions,” he says, adding that post-divorce he had “$40,000 in the bank, 30 years of work experience, three degrees and enough stuff to keep me happy for years.” He adds, “I should have a great second start ahead.”
Starting again solo can be scary yet liberating. The key is to envision the life you want — from the little things such as the decor of your bedroom to the big things like spending more time on your true passions.
“Then prioritize and pare down to make it happen. Go through and edit everything, and be a rigorous editor,” advises Michelle Passoff, the Tampa-based author of Lighten Up! Free Yourself From Clutter who has designed courses for clashing couples. “Your new life is a blank canvas: you get to decide what parts of your past to keep and what to clear away.”
So where is a divorcee to begin? Here are nine tips for anyone going through a separation or divorce and looking to simplify life:
1. Set a schedule for divvying up and reclaiming personal possessions.
Make sure that your ex doesn’t regard your living space as his or her private storage locker. Too many accommodating spouses spend years, decades even, storing the detritus of former spouses who insists musty boxes of old baseball cards or romance paperbacks must be saved, but can never find the room to take possession of them. (This can be negotiated if one spouse retains the spacious house with the three-car garage while the other relocates to a studio loft.)
2. Never dispose of joint belongings in anger or anguish.
Give yourself plenty of time to decide what you want to keep and what is superfluous — what will be a treasured memento of your life together and what will be a wrenching reminder of the bad times.
3. Resist the temptation to discard anything belonging to your ex in anger.
Be it a favorite T-shirt or childhood photos, don’t discard out of spite.
4. Chances are you’ll still have some clutter even after your spouse has cleared out.
Take this opportunity to take inventory of your own material possessions, sorting them into piles of “junk,” “donation,” “maybe keep,” and “definitely keep.” Get rid of the first two, and be rigorous about justifying the third. Once your things are thinned, take a good look around at all the new free space and savor it.
5. Consider relocating to a smaller place closer to your work if you plan to live without a partner for a while.
You’ll have less to clean and keep track of, reduce wasted time commuting, and gain more time for yourself.
6. Contemplate renting part of your home to friendly tenants.
Share space with a roommate or two if you crave company. It also will defray the cost of single life.
7. Decide whether you want to give yourself a transitional phase “ for example, an apartment for now but your own house eventually.
“We have friends who got divorced 20 years ago and he still lives in transition — he’s got an apartment with a couch and a dirty sink and that’s it,” says Passoff.
8. Scrutinize your schedule in light of your new status and figure out what you can simplify.
If you entertained your spouse’s staff or boss, or joined a country club, bowling league or salsa class because your spouse wanted you to, this is the time to let it go.
9. Assess what really brings you joy.
Story time with your children? Gardening? Travel? Creative writing? Create bigger pockets of time to do those things — even if it means curing yourself of affluenza and embracing a more frugal, fulfilling life.
