Letting Go of What No Longer Serves
- Jan Flynn
- Aug 24
- 5 min read
That includes the family china and silver
Last week, my husband and I came very close to moving on
That doesn’t mean we almost split up. Nor did we share a near-death experience. What we almost did was to purchase a brand-new condo in our favorite city on the central California coast.
We’d been watching the progress on the building for some months. It’s right in the heart of downtown, mere steps from hip restaurants, shops, people watching, and other urban charms, while also being within minutes of some of the loveliest natural scenery on the planet. The climate is ideal. We have family who live nearby. The building is being constructed with high-quality materials and soundproofing. It features swanky design and abundant light.
What it doesn’t have: shoveling our 150+ feet of corner-lot sidewalks in the Boise winters. Raking and bagging 50 full leaf bags in the fall. Mowing our lawn every week from April through October. No upgrading of anything needed, at least not for any reasonable estimate of our remaining lifespans.
When we got home, we sought out local realtors and got comparative market analyses on our current house.
The CA condo had us more than interested; we were possessed by real estate lust. So much so that we were hours away from putting down the 2% earnest money that would open escrow, oblige us to put our beloved Idaho house on the market, and move soon. Way sooner than we’d ever imagined. As in, sometime around Christmas.
Because those condos are selling fast, and there were only two units left that we really wanted. And boy howdy, did we want one of them.
The night before we were to make the wire transfer, we didn’t sleep
At 4:30 AM, I gave up the struggle and got up to review all the CC&Rs and other documents, trying to ignore the roiling in my stomach. My husband lay awake, crunching numbers in his head. The numbers crunched back.
At 7:00 AM, we convened and discovered that reality had visited both of us in the wee hours. Our well-maintained, nicely landscaped 4-bedroom, 3-bath Boise house would net us approximately half the purchase price of the 2-bedroom, 2-bath condo. And that didn’t include the healthy HOA fees we’d be paying every month.
The thing is, we could have made it work if we’d sold off a hefty chunk of our liquid assets, taken on a mortgage, or some combination of both. But we’d be stretched thinner. And we would no longer have the security of knowing, as we do now, that our home is paid for.
Suddenly, raking leaves didn’t seem so terrible.
We stepped back from the ledge and discovered opportunities
Was it disappointing to give up our California dreamin’, at least for the foreseeable future (which, in our case, could well be our entire future)? Sure, for a minute.
But it was also a relief. And it made us see our current situation in a new light. We are very comfortable in our home, and we love our friendly, all-ages, front-porches-and-alleys neighborhood. We also have family within a half-hour drive, and we see them often.
We’re not only comfortable here in a physical sense. The almost-move awakened us to the fact that, by staying put, we could be living a bit higher on the hog. More travel. Upgraded seats on long flights. Cute hotels.
As for leaf-raking, snow-shoveling, lawn-mowing, and all the rest — when we get too creaky to do it ourselves, or find it too annoying, we can and will hire it out.
That led to another revelation: I’m not a living museum
In the days we spent seriously contemplating relocation, I regarded the objects I’ve moved four times now, despite our downsizing.
Many of them are heirlooms from my marriage to my first husband, who died 23 years ago, the father of my sons. He was a masterful woodworker and furniture maker, a sculptor, and a collector of beautiful or curious objects.
For a long time, I’d felt either attached or somehow obligated to these items. I’d already shipped some of the furniture, sculptures, and other mementos to my sons, to the point where they’ve made it clear that enough’s enough.
Neither they nor my daughters-in-law wanted to take on the full set of sterling silver flatware nor the gold-edged English bone china that I still had tucked away.
This doesn’t hurt my feelings. I don’t use that stuff anymore either. My days of hosting big family dinners and spending hours afterwards hand-washing silverware and dishes that can’t go in the dishwasher are affirmatively over.
So why was I keeping it? “I’m not moving that again,” I declared to the cosmos. Nor was I moving the oversized hutch my late husband built to fit a house that is now long gone — even though that hutch has followed me three times across four states and found a place in each of those dwellings.
I’ve used it and enjoyed it for over 30 years, along with the collection of majolica ware displayed on its shelves. But realizing that I didn’t want it in my new dwelling made me register that I no longer want it in my current one, either.
It’s like that thing that meditation and yoga teachers often say: let go of what no longer serves you. Turns out it applies to emotionally charged objects as much as it does stress or physical tension.
The Universe seems to be on board
Clear intentions have power. Within a week, I’d found buyers for the silver, the china, and potentially the hutch — and have thus converted them into a nice chunk of change. Enough to fix up my dining room the way I want to and also book flights to visit a friend on the East Coast.
This weekend, I’ve met with a newly forming group of women friends who live in the ‘hood. Last night, my husband and I joined another new buddy for drinks on her porch, a few blocks from our house. This morning I took my usual walk along the river path, watching ducks and ospreys do their thing. There’s a new park being built that adjoins our neighborhood.
Kids are riding their bikes past our house. People are walking their dogs. The autumn blaze maples are already starting to turn crimson, promising fall color and a seasonal delineation you don’t experience in coastal California. The airport is a ten-minute drive from our house.
We’re in a good place here, as good as anyplace in the U.S. can be in these wonky times. And now I can turn my attention back to other things, like writing my next book.
Meanwhile, my house feels lighter. So do I.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Big news! My debut, first-in-a-series fantasy novel releases on May 5, 2026 from Disney-Hyperion and is available for preorder NOW at Amazon, Barnes&Noble, or PenguinRandomHouse!
Comments