Downsizing a Tiny House

A couple months after my husband, Dale, unexpectedly died at only 57, a woman who says she receives communication from beyond approached me through a friend, saying my husband had some messages for me. My friend swore she had told this woman nothing about me except that my husband had recently died.

On a rainy spring morning, I met with my friend and the woman in a little restaurant in one of the nearby rural lake towns tourists love to visit while on vacation.

"First," she began, "He wanted me to tell you he's sorry he left you in such a mess with all the stuff. He said he thought he had time."

The mess she was referring to was two massive outbuildings on our nearly 10-acre property, both filled from floor to ceiling with stuff. One was full of tools collected over 40 years working as a mechanic. He also had three large safes that kept a collection of valuable firearms (which were not inventoried).

The other building housed our boat, fishing equipment, all the goods I inherited from my mother when she died as well as furniture and household items we brought when Dale and I moved from Kansas City 11 years before. We had hopes of eventually building a larger house than the 480-square-foot cabin we'd lived in since.

If I had been skeptical about whether some people had a connection to the afterlife, I was more than convinced after this. "A mess" certainly nailed the state of our property.

Sympathetic family members came later that summer and helped me sort through and throw away some of "the mess" in one of the buildings. What hadn't been damaged by the move or mice was repacked to be dealt with again later. I sold the boat.

Over the course of the next five years, I sold the rest of the bigger, more valuable items. There was still much to be done by the time I reconnected with Mike, a man I'd gone to high school with 42 years prior.

He was a widower and our relationship blossomed. He loved the Ozarks and wanted to be closer to his son, so he left most of his former life and most of his items behind to live with me.

After a winter deprived of his movie and book collection, which we didn't have room for, as well as having to separate his cats from my dogs in the studio cabin, being snowed in and dealing with days-long power outages, Mike experienced a spring that brought the scourge of ticks and other woodland critters. By then, he was done with tiny house rural Ozarks living.

We decided to move "home," closer to friends, some of our family and the conveniences of city life. We found the perfect house on a large lot in a small suburban town south of Kansas City. While the house itself has more room than the cabin, we wouldn't have the space or need for many items still scattered in other buildings on our rural property.

I did a good job of living "tiny" in the cabin, mostly following the rules of only keeping what I love and what was useful. I had written a best-selling book, "Living Large in Our Little House: Thriving in 480 Square Feet with Six Dogs, a Husband and One Remote," based on my blog with the same name.

However, we still had the many remnants of my previous life with Dale to deal with in the outbuildings. On Facebook Marketplace and community pages we began listing large items needed on a rural property, including a generator, back-up water pumps and an ATV. Over the span of four weeks we also listed Dale's remaining tools and gun items along with furniture we knew we couldn't use in our new home.

We tossed many possessions and repacked what we would need as well as sentimental items from a previous home and keepsakes from my mom that hadn't been ruined in 17 years of storage.

A friend advised me that at my age, 60, I needed to be ruthless and bear in mind the feelings of extended family who will have to deal with our stuff when that time comes. Not wanting to leave a mess like the one I had to deal with when Dale died, I decided it was time to part with unnecessary items such as my cheerleading uniform from sixth grade. I also decided to part with most of my mom's treasured antiques and random items from all periods of my life.

It wasn't easy. There were many days spent sitting among the items, tears flowing for the life that my head knew was gone but my heart still wanted back. There was anger at times, for things that were accidentally broken, like a sugar server from a hand-painted tea set my great-aunt had made as a wedding present.

There was also still some anger lingering at times toward Dale for this mess I was still dealing with 5½ years after our life together ended so suddenly.

As the scheduled time for our move approached, we hired an auction company to take away what we hadn't sold in listings. On the day they arrived, they completely packed a 24-foot truck.

Most of Mike's items were still packed from his previous move. We worked for a total of 7½ weeks packing what we planned to move.

I learned a few lessons and have come up with some tips I wish I could have given myself:

• I wish I'd insisted that Dale be more ruthless in eliminating things before he passed. Really, who needs W-2 forms and check stubs from your first job in 1978?

• After he passed, I contacted appraisers and found buyers for some of Dale's more valuable tools and his firearms collection. But I was overwhelmed with trying to figure out what to do with my life going forward, so I let the rest of it go. I wish I had told myself to prepare the property as if I was going to move any day. I would still have had the items I needed to live rurally, but it would have made disposal more manageable later.

• If I'd culled everything sooner, I wouldn't have had to call an auction company, which turned out to be a financial disaster. Remember, no one goes to an auction looking to overpay. A hand-carved headboard that I purchased two years earlier for $699 sold for $5. I took the company owner's word they knew how to set minimums. I finally consoled myself that at least I was free of "the mess."

Mike and I love our new home. We compromised on decorating and gave each other plenty of room to express our own tastes and to use the items we love and kept. Previous long marriages no doubt helped remind us of the role compromise plays in relationships.

We hope to live a long happy life in what we plan to be our last home, and we hope the downsizing effort we've just gone through will make it easier for our families when we are gone. We hope it won't be necessary to send any messages from beyond apologizing for "the mess."

Kerri Fivecoat-Campbell is a full-time freelance writer and author living in Louisburg, Kansas, just south of Kansas City. She is the author of the best-selling book, “Living Large in Our Little House: Thriving in 480-Square Feet with Six Dogs, a Husband and One Remote,” and administers a Facebook page, Living Large in a Little Town. Read More