Case Study: Jane’s Condo Pared Down
I had the great privilege of supporting a dear friend with her Mardaloop condo pair down. Jane has been in my life since 2001 when I became friends with her triplets. I was so thrilled she allowed me into her home and into her cupboards for this condo reset.
This is the second time I’ve helped Jane do an edit of her things. In 2007, she had a newly empty nest with the triplets settling in at various Universities across the country and she was moving out of her Canyon Meadows bungalow. She had some tough decisions to make; a lifetime so far of possessions to sort through, a house full of furniture, as well as her children's remaining things to manage. What goes, what stays and what goes into storage? She rented a dumpster and a storage unit and we got to work.
Fast forward 20 years and it feels like almost another lifetime has gone by and it’s time to do it again. She’s not moving this time, but she is retiring from being an award winning wedding officiant in Calgary at the end of this year and was starting to feel weighed down by the amount of stuff she had, knowing there were things that no longer served her, taking up valuable space in her home and on her mind. There were also things that she knew she had but didn’t know exactly where they were. That kind of little worry ball starts to weigh a bit heavier as time goes on and she needed to know where a few things were that she had temporarily lost track of.
Jane is a super organized person and is more punctual than a Swiss train. She loves her kitchen gadgets, boasts an impressive mug collection and has acquired many lovely things in her travels and experiences. Her mom recently passed away, leaving her with a few treasured things to add to her home, as well she has been the keeper of some childhood momento’s belonging to her children. A lot incoming, not a lot outgoing. She just hadn’t done an audit of her things in awhile and felt overwhelmed standing at the start line.
Jane and I chatted about pace and she’s not an over-haul-in-one-weekend sort of person, which I completely appreciate. We settled on a manageable schedule of one evening for 3 hours every 2 weeks. I went over, we tackled one space/room/drawer/project at a time, gradually transforming her home back into an environment that gives her a sense of calm and order.
Our first task was the storage unit in the underground parking garage of her building, which had become a catch all for anything she wasn’t sure what to do with yet. We needed to make room down there for larger, infrequently used items taking too much space in her condo. Jane pulled up a comfortable(ish) stool and I started pulling things out; a table, shelving, luggage, boxes and bags of pictures and memories, old electronics, books and dishes. We had 4 rubbermaids set up; Donate, Sell, Toss and Keep. I held things up, she told stories, we laughed and she made decisions. Before we knew it, there was order, extra room, full rubbermaids tucked into my trunk and a clear inventory list. Some things required more time to make a decision, so she kept them at her feet until she was ready to categorize, and some things we just kept so she could think it over more carefully or sort through on her own.
From there we tackled her guest room closet, which we partially transformed into a linen closet to house her towels and extra bedding, something the builders of her condo neglected to provide. We gave her a gift wrapping station, a section for her guests to hang their clothes, and displayed her keepsakes proudly.
On to the kitchen! We spent a lot of time here, which was important and necessary as one of the most used spaces of her home. As an avid cook and epic host, her kitchen is well used and packed to the brim with serveware, beloved and useful gadgets, beautiful dish sets, and her amazing mug collection. She knew what was working and what wasn’t and had great ideas about what needed to be adjusted. An important question for this room was, “And do you use it?”. Sometimes the answer was “Yes! All the time!” and sometimes it was, “I’ve never used it, but I love it”. Both very valid answers and the latter isn’t necessarily a reason to remove it. It’s a common struggle to love something and keep it or decide that it no longer serves you or your valuable space. Jane made some really tough (and some really easy) decisions through the scope of wanting breathing room in her kitchen.
One ask from Jane was to create a spice drawer, bringing her spices down to a more comfortable level for her. We needed to free up space to create the spice drawer so pairing down the cooking utensils from 2 drawers to 1 was essential. We identified her favourite and most used wooden spoons (we all have a favourite!), spatulas, knives and jar opener (if you don’t know about the pampered chef jar opener, your life is about to change!). We added organizational products that allowed for more ease of finding or reaching things in her deep, lower cabinets. Jane values good quality things with lasting power, so a lot of what was removed from her kitchen I was able to sell for her on FB marketplace. The rest was donated to Women in Need Society (WINS) and anything else that was broken or at the end of its life was taken to the city dump.
With each visit, she got a bit more breathing room, mental relief that things were being dealt with and shedding things that she once loved and were now weighing her down. I handled the removal so that once it left her house, she didn’t have to think about it again.
We’re not quite “done” and she jokes that I’ll have to continue coming over every 2 weeks until the end of time and I secretly hope that I get to because it’s been so wonderful spending time with her and getting to see the joy this process has brought her! Jane and I will continue our visits until each space feels lighter, easier and calming. Next is the pantry which I’ve been itching to get into since we started!
A huge thank you and so much gratitude to Jane for trusting me with this project. I hope you enjoy your retirement in your calm and peaceful space and that you continue to open your olive jars with ease (seriously, get the jar opener!).
