After Split, 9 Tips to Simplify

    When her first marriage collapsed, California educator Sherry Knazan instinctively shed more than just a spouse. “He was always, because of his position as the rabbi, concerned about how we looked in the community and about keeping up connections and appearances. For me, that meant doing a lot of volunteering, and spending social time with a lot of people I honestly didn’t really like very much,” she admitted.       “

So after he moved out, I breathed this huge sigh of relief that I didn’t have to make time for that anymore. I dropped out of things. I think I cocooned myself and my kids because I felt like we’d all been hurt and needed to feel safe. Even dinnertime got a lot more casual. I felt I had no choice but to simplify my life, and that was a good thing.”     

If separation becomes sadly inevitable, it also becomes a unique opportunity to clear away the clutter – physical and emotional  -- that can weigh you down and keep you from going forward. At the point of parting, when one person moves out, couples typically start to downsize – jettisoning the extraneous obligations, social commitments, material possessions and accumulated residue of shared life. Out with all the stuff they no longer want, assuming, of course, that they every wanted it to begin with.      

That dusty 8-track tape collection of his? Grant him full, uncontested custody. The stuffed animal menagerie, featuring that humongous panda her first boyfriend won her at the school carnival? You no longer need to cohabitate with it. The mildewing college textbooks, the space-sapping kitchen appliances, the unused wedding presents, the La-Z-Boy recliner you always despised? Good riddance.     

While you may be relieved to foist a lot of stuff back on your spouse – or elated to toss particular items into the Goodwill box or the trash bin – some downsizing may be compulsory. In the brute division of assets, splitting spouses often are forced to sell jewelry, SUVs and even the roomy suburban family home in order to afford their separate lives.  

“A divorce is jarring and forces people to ask themselves ‘Am I living the way I want to be living,’ ” said Cecile Andrews, a Seattle-based guru of the movement who has helped found more than 100 “simplicity circles” around the country in which participants share their quests for a more minimalist life.     

“They have to learn to live on less money, but they can make that more fun,” she said. “It’s a new image of life – I’m not here for the stuff, for the money or success. Instead I’m here to be true to myself, to be creative, to enjoy my new life.”     

When author Linda Breen Pierce conducted a survey of 211 people attempting to practice simplicity as a lifestyle, she found that separation was a common catalyst.
 
One example was Tara Millette, a nurse who had spent 13 years striving to be the perfect wife and mother. “With the divorce, almost everything in my life took on a completely different appearance than it ever had before. It was like I had been frantically running around with a blindfold on and then someone had taken the blindfold off. Everything seemed so clear. Material possessions lost all importance,” acknowledged Millette, who ended up renting a small home, furnishing it with second-hand furniture and sewing her own curtains.    

Not that dialing down is easy. When another study participant, engineer Kent Honneger lost his job and his marriage ended, he moved into a 700-square-foot Kansas City apartment with his grown son -- and found himself chafing at the cramped quarters and lack of privacy. But the more he embraced the precepts of the simplicity movement, the more his outlook brightened.