I’ve gone a different route, Natalie, starting with minimalism in my post-college life as a bachelor Navy officer. Moving every few months (three years was the longest pause) tends to cause one to winnow out “nice to haves” from “gots to haves.”

But then a large (for one person) townhouse for many years resulted in an accumulation of Stuff. Then I married a wonderful woman with her own Stuff and we moved into a large (even for two people!) house so we could both have our Stuff with us. Minimalism? HAH!

But now we’re both (just) retired, and sure we can still do stairs, but in the long term, who are we kidding? So we’re scoping out retirement communities, and while yes, we hope to be able to afford more than a mini-studio apartment, we’re going to have to downsize. And minimize.

My wife has decided that it will be her Main Retirement Project (once she gets through her minor retirement projects — hey, did you know those take more time than you’d think? 😉) to go through the Stuff in the basement (Stuff seeks the lowest or highest level of potential energy, which is why it ends up in the basement or the attic) and minimize in preparation for The Move. However, while I admire your ability to keep a mental inventory of your worldly goods, I don’t think we’ll ever get THAT minimized. (Also: databases are our friend.) In the end, I suspect we’ll miss our books the most.