A tiny floating home, a great big downsize!
At the very end of January/start of February 2021, I embarked on one of the biggest adventures of my life so far - after months of thorough research, but with otherwise zero prior experience (and I mean really zero - not so much as a boating holiday!), I bought a 57’ X 6’10” narrowboat called Desiderata as my first ever ‘not rented/shared’ adult home.
Four and a half-ish years in, it’s still a daily adventure and I do still feel like a clueless newbie most of the time - however, this isn’t intended as a ‘boaty blog’ - more just a reflection on the massive downsizing project that was necessary in order to move from land to water, the transferable lessons learned along the way, and the various eco-conscious ways I found of rehoming lots of belongings.
Motivation
This was decluttering with a very real and exciting purpose! I was able to allow myself the luxury of moving fairly gradually, but of course with the awareness that the sooner I was fully out of that shared rented first floor London flat, the sooner I could fully embrace my new life on water, and not be paying rent on land for somewhere I was already spending less and less time in. More recently, I have even heard of a decluttering tactic which involves almost pretending that you are getting ready to move house, to try and summon that energy of excitement and urgency to get the job done and reassess your belongings as though you’re deciding whether they have a reason to be in your ‘new home’ or not.
Rule of thumb; ‘Does it belong on the boat?’
Many of you are probably familiar with the legendary Marie Kondo and her ‘does it spark joy’ rule of assessing which items to keep or discard. I suppose I had my own slightly more practical version along the lines of ‘does this come with me onto the boat?’ which really did help me to part with a LOT of belongings, even though they were in perfectly good condition and had been useful in previous homes. This was a fresh start, a space that I knew I would have to be careful not to over-fill, and in many cases an entirely new way of thinking - for example really trying to minimise anything that would require lots of 240V power for example!
So, what did I do with everything..?
In actual fact, one of the reasons I fell in love with the particular boat that I now call home is that she does have quite a lot (for a boat, anyway..!) of cleverly thought out inbuilt storage. I was able to bring and neatly store plenty of clothes, useful kitchen items, a good stash of carefully chosen favourite books, other useful bits and bobs, and stow them all away very efficiently. So it was a fun task to choose what I DID want to bring with me, and find homes on board for those items. Of course, I needed to let go of plenty of items too…
Family and friends
A few select items were offered to family or friends, only if I thought they would be a good match to offer someone in particular. A treasured storage footstool ended up with a friend who was excited to make as much use of it as I had previously done. A beautiful electric teapot that I’d really enjoyed using every morning got packaged up (along with some surprise teabags and biscuits!) and sent to a friend who could then make cuppas in her home office. A useful ‘over-door’ coat hook rack and a guitar stand were also eagerly given new homes in this way. These were all chosen and offered with care, with no obligation to accept if not wanted, and made up only a small minority of the overall downsizing project.
Local ‘Freecycle’ type groups
I was also able to rehome quite a number of items to local neighbours, by photographing and listing them on a local Facebook group for free item giveaways. It was such a positive way to let go of perfectly good quality items that had served me well in my current (soon to be former) home, seeing the smiles of people from the local community when they came to pick up (for example) a perfectly functional but too bulky and mains-electricity-hungry oscillating fan, a lovely wicker laundry basket, and a beautiful ornate tiny chest of ornamental drawers. No regrets, just the right time to move on - for those items and for me!
Selling on eBay
In actual fact I was quite selective about which items I chose to spend time listing to sell. I could perhaps have spent hours trying to sell clothes, but instead focused on only the more unusual and unique items - a signed electric guitar for example, which wasn’t the easiest thing I’ve ever packaged up to take to the post office, but which arrived safely and the buyer was delighted with! Although I can understand the temptation to always try and ‘make something back’ from clothes that you once spent money on, I always advise clients to think carefully about how much they are really likely to make, versus how much they value their time to spend doing other things. Most of the clothes I was happy to part with went to…
Charity shops
This is an obvious one, but I was so grateful to be able to simply bag up excess clothes, books, DVDs etc, and just drop them off at local charity shops. This was a chance to have a really thorough look at, try on, and be brutally honest about what I realistically needed and wanted to take with me. And of course if you have a choice of local charity shops, you can choose to give first refusal to the cause closest to your own heart and know that you’re helping to raise vital funds - as well as making someone’s day when they discover their new favourite jumper to give a new lease of life to. (As I generally buy most of my clothes from charity shops too, it’s a case of ‘what goes around comes around’ - and I have faith that other people will be donating exactly the right treasures for me to find as well - as always seems to be the case when I do need something!)
Discarding with care
Some items weren’t appropriate to gift or donate, and I did spend some time making sure that I was making the best possible environmental choices in how to discard those items. Clothes that were too worn for charity went to a material bank nearby. I looked up my nearest ‘small electrics’ recycling point and made a little excursion to go and find that with some obsolete items. Trips like this took a little bit of time and effort, but for me personally it was important to be as eco-conscious as reasonably possible during this project, so I was happy to do so.
And with all that done, it was finally time to float off into the sunset…1 Of course with such a tiny home, I do always have to be mindful of not allowing too much ‘stuff’ to creep in or be left out of place, as it is very noticeable very quickly - I am still far from perfect, but I have found a few simple methods and routines which certainly help me, and I will share in another blog post soon…watch this space, and thank you for reading!