Zippy and I’ve lived in the same home for 28 years, the longest either of us has stayed in one place. We came here with two young children, two large dogs, and two cats. We needed/wanted space. Our sons now live their lives elsewhere and the household is just us plus one small dog and two cats. We no longer need all this house or the big yard.

I dream of living in a smaller dwelling. The problem is, I don’t know where I want to go. Should we stay in Colorado? Should we venture somewhere new? Can I find a location that doesn’t have extreme temperatures or mosquitoes? I’ve been pondering this a while, but those questions still bounce around my head unanswered. So, for the time being, we’re still here.

But! Last Sunday I set my eyes on the future and began taking steps. I started divesting of stuff, specifically Zippy’s stuff. Why his? Because I knew the keep-or-toss decisions would be easier. Our basement storage room contained about ten boxes he’d put down there when he lost his engineering job nearly nine years ago. The boxes were filled with technical books and files, things he’d used over the course of his career and planned to use again. Except he was never able to get another job and, as the years went by, the info contained in those boxes was no longer current. Keep-or-toss decisions would be a whiz!

As I shuttled boxes up to him, one at a time, Zippy decided what he wanted to keep and what could go. As he went through the minutiae, I took the discarded files and books to the garage where I began filling bins and then boxes with paper to be recycled. The files were easy to handle, the books a little harder. I experimented with an xacto knife and cut pages from book spines before realizing I preferred tearing out the pages. Zippy thought that approach was tedious and way too time-consuming, but I loved it. After I got into a rhythm, I felt my mind empty. My thoughts were no longer on Gaza or climate collapse or the pandemic or the peeling paint in the bathroom or the bindweed strangling my yarrow plants or the health issues facing various loved ones or the fact that I still hadn’t found anyone to deliver mulch for the backyard. All my focus was on reaching down with my right hand to gather a number of pages–not too many and not too few–and then tearing them along the spine in one smooth motion before dropping the pages into a neat pile in the box next to me and then reaching for more.

Photo by cottonbro studio at pexels.com (A Person Wearing White Long Sleeves Tearing the Pages of a Book while Soaking in the Lake)

I destroyed books and workbooks for most of the afternoon and not only felt a deep sense of peace, but also accomplishment. I was–FINALLY–kinda, sorta taking steps toward a move.

The next day, we drove our Subaru filled with all those bins and boxes of paper to the city recycling center where we unloaded my hours of labor. While I was dismayed to learn our paper had to go into the same roll-off that contained cereal boxes and egg cartons (degrading the paper quality), the sense of accomplishment rose up in me again. It wasn’t only the car that was lighter as we drove away.

We didn’t get through all the boxes last week and today we finished up. As Zippy sorted through his belongings, keeping some things and discarding others,  I returned to my post in the garage and began tearing pages from books. The same calm returned with each successful rrrriip.

I realize not everyone will resonate with this approach to mental health, but you might be surprised. Never in a million years thought these words would come from me but
I absolutely, with no reservations, recommend tearing pages from books!