Our son has a marvelously large barn. It has room for a large shop, with space for woodworking tools and storage for my canoes and kayaks. the space that once housed dairy stalls has room for a chicken brooder, storage and space for cattle when weather has them indoors. Above that area there is a large hay loft overlooking the next section which has feed stalls for cattle in one half and space to store our camp trailer in the other half. Beyond that is an area largely unused except for a bit of storage. On that end of the barn is a greenhouse and a small area that was the clean room when the farm had a diary. That room houses plumbing valves that control outside faucets and a faucet inside of the barn for watering livestock. It also has space for my beekeeping tools and some unused hive components.

It is an amazing thing for me to have access to the shop and storage space for my various projects. Being able to store our camp trailer indoors when it is not in use adds years to the life of its roof and other components. The area where the camper is stored has an open overhead door at one end for the cattle to enter and exit the barn. It is open to the hay loft as well. This means that I keep a tarp over the roof of the camper when indoors to keep the roof free from messes of the birds who come and go from the hay loft and often nest in the rafters.

When our son and his wife bought the farm they didn’t have specific plans for the barn. Now that they are keeping cattle, hay storage and an indoor area for the cattle on cold and rainy winter nights is a bonus. That still leaves a lot of space for my various projects.

The result of having access to the barn has eased the process of downsizing our house for me. While our house is significantly smaller than the one we lived in for the 25 years we served in Rapid City, I haven’t been forced to abandon my hobbies. In fact I have access to far more shop and storage space than I have at any other point in my life.

As a result, I haven’t done the kind of sorting and shedding of possessions that is required of most people my age. I’ve been able to keep my jumble of tools - even tools that I don’t use anymore. I’ve been able to retain more canoes and kayaks than I paddle. There are canoes and kayaks in the barn that haven’t been in the water since we moved from South Dakota nearly three years ago. I should be sorting. I should be getting rid of things. But access to copious storage space means that I haven’t been forced to do those tasks.

However, the time is coming when I need to get serious about that process. I’m not getting any younger. And it isn’t fair for me to leave the task of sorting to the next generation. I know that because I still have a half dozen storage boxes with items that my mother was unable to deal with and I had to move from her summer place before selling it this spring. I don’t want to leave a similar legacy to our children. That means I need to get to work with the process of sorting.

I have a colleague, who is much younger than I, who advises taking a “Marie Kondo” approach. Look at items individually and ask the question, “Does this inspire joy?” The answer to the question indicates whether an item should be kept and an appropriate storage place be found or discarded. I joke that after several generations of people focused on accumulating items, I have too many for individual decisions about each. In addition I need to make some of the decisions about what to keep and what to discard based not solely on my individual emotional reaction to that item. Some items need to be preserved for history - they came into my care from a previous generation and eventually will pass into the care of those younger than me. It is fairly easy to make decisions about my own personal property. But I need to make decisions that affect others as well. I’m encouraged by the simple fact that becoming a mother has shifted Kondo’s life focus. I suspect that my younger colleague will feel differently about their processes after they have become old enough to have attended to the death of parents and their child has grown old enough to be in charge of independent decisions about what to keep and what to discard.

I guess I find a strange sort of solace in knowing that my younger friends will age and that age will bring to them challenges similar to the ones I face. I know that for us moving from our graduate student efficiency apartment into a large parsonage offered by the parish where we began our pastoral careers didn’t require us to downsize. Things are different now.

After a wonderful career, we’ve accumulated a lot of things that inspire joy. Playing the cornet my mother played when she was in school brings me joy. But I don’t need to have that instrument plus my high school and college trumpet plus the newer instrument I now play. I only need to keep one. But I have three and when I ask of each, I discover that all three inspire joy. This is just one example of how decisions about what to keep and what to discard are more complex now than they were decades ago.

I am realizing that a major part of my life’s work at this stage is distribution. Some of the things in my possession should be recycled or donated to places that can distribute them to new owners. Some of the things need to be curated for future generations. Some of the things are important for my life right now. And those things are all mixed together, which means I need to do a lot of sorting.

I’m confident I won’t be bored even when I no longer am serving a congregation.