The Downsizing Roadmap Podcast

38. How to Downsize When You’re the Family Keeper of Memories

• Jodi Rosko and Heather Fisher • Season 1 • Episode 38

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If your home has become the storage unit for generations of family photos, heirlooms, and keepsakes—you’re not alone. Many people unexpectedly find themselves the “family memory keeper,” responsible for preserving the stories, history, and belongings of an entire extended family. But how do you honor that legacy without drowning in boxes?

In this heartfelt and practical episode of the Downsizing Roadmap Podcast, we explore how to downsize when you’ve inherited a lot more than just furniture. You’ll learn how to sort with intention, preserve family meaning without keeping everything, and let go without guilt—even when you're holding memories for your parents, siblings, grandparents, and beyond.

What you’ll hear in this episode:

  • Why being the family memory keeper feels so heavy—and what to do about it
  • Effective methods to help you sort heirlooms, photos, and documents
  • How to preserve stories, not just stuff—without spending months doing it
  • Scripts to use with family when they expect you to hold onto everything
  • Creative ways to digitize, share, and display memories without storing 10 tubs
  • Tools like Storyworth, Artifcts, LegacyBox, and more to simplify your process

📦 “Being the memory keeper doesn’t mean you have to be the memory warehouse.”

Whether you're downsizing your own home or helping aging parents sort through decades of saved items, this episode offers the support and structure you need to move forward—with peace, clarity, and purpose.

🔗 RESOURCES & LINKS MENTIONED:

💬 Let’s connect:
Have a creative way you’ve preserved your family’s story? We’d love to hear it. Email us or let us know on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/downsizingroadmap

🏠 Thinking about selling your home or need help from a downsizing-focused real estate expert?
 We’re Realtors who specialize in transitions just like this.
 Visit https://downsizingroadmap.com
to be matched with a trusted professional in your area.

🎙️ The Downsizing Roadmap Podcast helps seniors, adult children, and intentional downsizers clear the clutter, make confident choices, and create space for what matters most.

If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to leave us a review and Follow our show so you never miss a new episode. We’re here for your downsizing questions — on the podcast, in your community, and when you’re ready to move. As Realtors®, we can connect you with the right specialists to make your next chapter smoother. We’d love to hear from you!

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Jodi Rosko

Welcome back to another episode of the Downsizing Roadmap Podcast with your hosts Jody Roscoe and Heather Fisher. We're talking about all things downsizing, from our own experiences with clients to guest experts. Let's make downsizing easier, one conversation at a time.

Heather Fisher

Hi, welcome back to Downsizing Roadmap Podcast. Have you ever found yourself as the keeper of all of your family's memories? Or the accidental keeper of all your family's memories, that's where I'm at. Exactly. If that is you, this is the episode for you. We are talking about how you can honor your family's past and keep that legacy without becoming the storage unit for it. Yep.

Jodi Rosko

I'm Jody Roscoe. I'm Heather Fisher. And I think that I am this person right now, the storage unit at the moment. And I think that that came about honestly because when we were cleaning out the house, some of the sometimes it's too much to do the sentimental stuff with all of the other stuff. For us, it was definitely too much stuff. There was so much stuff that had not been dealt with. And so we just ended up starting putting things into the car. And my car, my uncle's cars, you know, it w it was like, okay, this is something that needs to be taken a little more care with. Um, but we don't have time to do that right now. So let's let's just kind of put it somewhere. And then for me, that time frame, it's still that, it's still in that place. It's still kind of in that storage room in my house because for a while I was too upset to look at it. Uh and now I'm closer to not being able to be too upset to look at it. But now I have to, you know, figure out what that process is gonna look like to get through it and what of it that we need to keep. And so this really episode is for me.

Heather Fisher

Yeah, I think that this situation can happen quickly sometimes, like it did with you. Um, and that tends to happen when someone passes away and there is a lot going on. So much. I mean, you're dealing with grief first and foremost, and then you're dealing with timelines that come up if there's a house to sell or a place to be moved out of, um, you know, attorneys to meet with, funerals to plan, like all of that is happening at once and it's completely overwhelming. Yeah. And so just like in your case, the boxes of the harder stuff just get moved wherever they're going to go, and they typically land there. I think it can also happen slowly over time, and it tends to happen uh maybe to the person who is more of the sentimental keeper. So they're they know the stories more because they've researched or asked and they've kept the things from various family members because it tugged at their heartstrings, but they suddenly find themselves with an overload because people learn that that's their role, whether they wanted it or not. Like you said, accidentally uh they may have slipped into that and they become the place where they keep the old photos from long ago people, they keep the books, they keep the heirlooms. Papers, yeah. Yeah.

Jodi Rosko

Yeah. So yes, some people, oh, that was mom's, you know, I can't I can't let that go until everything, you know, is piled up and it's too much to to deal with. So um, yeah, I'm in that place where I'm I need to start dealing with it. And it's some of it is just it is it is gonna take some time. And because it's the stories, and you want to not lose the stories. So I have a giant box of letters that they my grandma wrote, and um I don't even know what they say, I don't even know who they're to. I don't know if there's interesting, important stories in there, or if they're just, you know, happy birthday to you cards that just say that and nothing else, and it's you know not important, but it feels like it's things that we should go through because she saved it.

Heather Fisher

It's a much um more involved process because it does take more time to dig through and find the really treasured items. It's not like a box of Tupperware and you can open it and say, Oh, looks like this whole box is Tupperware. I don't need this garage sale pile and move on. It's a piece by piece of paper or letters, um, photos fall into that category. Um, it can often be time consuming and emotional, which leads to more of that drain energy drain that you can do less at a time.

Jodi Rosko

Yeah. My film my mom always also really loved history, and so she was trying to trace back our lineage, and she had all kinds of data around what that looks like, and she got to the point where we could be daughters of the revolution or and all of that. So um that was super important to her, and now that that's all combined, I have to figure out what I'm gonna do with that information.

Heather Fisher

I think that's common, Jodi, in families that there's somebody in the line that loves having this role, and they are intentionally collecting more stories like your mom, and they're intentionally loving every detail of the family history, and it's not the that's not a burden to them. They're they're adding on to that because they love it, and then the the shift happens when that person is gone, and the next person, you know, you in this case, you you carry that guilt of knowing how much your mom loved it, but not necessarily wanting that full role that she had. And so I think uh this will resonate with a lot of people that find themselves in that shift of not the same personality and downsizing personality as the person they inherited all of this from, but there's a love and a grief and a want to honor that person that you have to find that balance.

Jodi Rosko

You couldn't have said it better. That is exactly how it feels. And the amount of stuff I I think that the stories are interesting and I need them much more concise than what they are. And so that may be something that I need to spend time on, or maybe I can get somebody to help me spend some time on that. Um maybe some people in our family can help, you know, we can do that together. I think that would be interesting to, you know, to have the family come over and look at all the pictures because looking at them yourselves, you you when I had when I was going through pictures when my mom passed away to find pictures of my mom, um I kept finding all kinds of pictures of my cousins when they were little and all kinds of you know funny things and memories, and I'm just snapped snapping those pictures that are terrible quality and just to you know to rem so having ha being able to do that if you have family that can do that with you, I think is great because again, it's all about the stories, and so it's more fun to remember the stories together than it is to just be remembering the stories by yourself.

Heather Fisher

Yeah, and I think importantly at that moment, enjoying the moment of sharing, but then letting that be a release, and then at the same time not packing those same photos back up, that that is the share, and then it's okay to let that go because you had that, not for every photo, but to condense them down. You don't want to do that and then pack them all back up.

Jodi Rosko

Right. So um in that we had an episode on um keep the memories, lose the stuff, and Matt was talking in in his book about photos, and he said it really should be like two boxes worth of photos. Like you should be able to pick them up and take them with you. So really, really editing them down. And sometimes it feels uh like you are uh dishonoring people when you're throwing away photos of their image in any, even though you have hundreds and hundreds of them or maybe thousands of them on your phone, it feels like if physic w physical pictures it for sure feels like uh like how should even if it's a bad picture, it just kind of feels a little bit like weird to to throw that away. But I think uh if you really try to curate it down to uh uh beautiful pictures that you would want to frame, then then that is that will get you down to those couple boxes and ones that you you could make a photo book, a beautiful book out of, and every picture of that person would be an amazing picture of them.

Heather Fisher

Yeah, and that's something that um you know if you've got additional family members, um that's the thing to do together. Curate down to that collection and then, you know, make a book for whoever wants one, and then that's what you have. Um, pulling that in. I think sometimes there can be some resentment in families if the person who's the organized one or the planner or the sentimental one starts getting overloaded with, well, you do that. You should keep this because I have too much. Because it was to be kept. Yeah, you should keep this because it was mom's. No, I don't want it. You should keep it. There's trying to pass that guilt on. Yeah, there's that dynamic that happens sometimes. Um and I think if that if that's the place you're coming from where you're ready to make some decisions on it, but you're getting the guilt from other family members, we can talk through some strategies on that as well. I think the biggest strategy is set a deadline, you know. Thank you.

Jodi Rosko

If you love it, you can pick it up by this day. Well, and that's the thing. I mean, I think we hear this in so many families. It is, I don't want it, but you should keep it because it was mom's, but I'm not, you know, I don't have room or I'm all whatever reasons they are. And the answer to that is if they don't want it, you don't have to want it. Like yeah, that's a they can't be putting that on the on you to say, oh, you must keep it if they don't want to keep it. If they want to keep it, then great. If you have somebody in your family who wants to be the keeper of things, let them be the keeper of things.

Heather Fisher

Yeah, yeah. And let people know when you have that time and you have reached that point where you're ready to go through, um, you know, just put the word out. I'm going through the family boxes. If there's anything you'd like, let me know by this date.

Jodi Rosko

Or I'll do that. Or we'll set a date and we'll all do it, you know, have dinner and we'll go through, you know, some boxes or whatever that looks like. Maybe, you know, you have once a month until that's gone, you know, family dinner until you guys have gotten through it, whatever that looks like. But set it set set some kind of a parameter around it and some kind of deadline around it. And yeah, if it's something we can read or or look at and say, oh, that was great, and then let it go, perfect. If somebody wants to keep it, that's that's their choice. Um, I think where we where you end up I think the people who love, love, love it might have too much stuff in their house, but they still are surrounded by passion and things that they love. Right. And um I think this just becomes more of a problem when it's the people that get it more thrust upon them instead of, you know, choosing the that.

Heather Fisher

Yeah, yeah. Or working through inheriting from that lover of it and working through that built bit of guilt versus honoring can bring up the emotional layers. Right. And it's usually what who? The oldest child, the the daughter. The daughter.

Jodi Rosko

Yeah, yeah, the most organized person. The the most sentimental person. Yeah. Yeah, the one yeah, it's not always the oldest, that's the most sentimental one.

Heather Fisher

Yeah.

Jodi Rosko

But yeah. Back to those personalities. Yeah, and it will snowball, which is what has happened. Happened to me, but it's okay. It's I think they're all just that sitting there uh waiting, waiting for me to make that make that time to look at it.

Heather Fisher

Yeah, and it always it can be done in small pieces. It's not an all or nothing, it's just a progress. Right. I think that people feel uh feel fear of being the one to break the chain. If there's been something passed down for multiple generations, it almost sometimes items lose the story or the the care, you know, the feeling around it. And it's just, well, it's been in our family for generations. Right. And that's the only story. Yeah. And that's okay to break that chain because that's not a legacy, that's just old.

Jodi Rosko

Right. Like we talk about this, I'll say, like, if I need a side table and I go to Target to get one because I just need one, you know, I'm having a party and so they need to put their drinks on it. Yeah. And um, you know, do my great grandkids need to keep my Target table just because I bought it? Like there is no story around it. It's just Yeah, you know.

Heather Fisher

Yeah, but I think we find that and I I can certainly think of things in my own family, and we hear that in clients. Well, it's been in the family for generations. Okay, whose was it? Why was it important? What do you love about it? What makes you happy about it?

Jodi Rosko

What I think that's doing is, you know, we talk about that psychology of you owning something, and then that makes it you want, you know, you feel like it has more value. Well, I think it just magnifies when it has rolled down from other people who have owned it, and it just turns into this like giant multiplier of like, oh my gosh, all these people have owned it and I should own it, and I don't even know what it is anymore, like you know, or or w what what to do with it. My grandparents had all these tools that are cool, um, but like some of them you don't even know what they do anymore, like let alone the the the story is that they're all the tools like together and they're old. Like and that's cool in its own way, but some of them you don't even know what they are anymore.

Heather Fisher

Yeah, and it needs to be cool to the person where they're residing now. You know, it's okay. Yes, if that's not your thing, you know, to say this made it three generations, am I allowed to let it end with me? Yes, yes, you are. Yeah, yeah. So try to work through those feelings and decide whether you're keeping it out of love or obligation. Yeah. And if it's strictly obligation, then that's those times to offer it to whoever it would be appropriate to offer it to with a deadline and then release it without guilt.

Jodi Rosko

Yeah, like I'm thinking about things like you know, a butter churn or you know, like things like this. Like it's so cool, that's cool. Grandma used to use that to churn butter. But if that's not your style and you aren't gonna put it out and it's just gonna sit in the basement, and you know, like what are you doing with that?

Heather Fisher

Yes, there is a butter churn in my my parents' basement, I think. Or there was for years. It was on the right, it was grandma's. It was on the fireplace mm uh, you know, hearth. Yeah, for for years. I'm not sure whatever happened to it, but we had to be in the basement.

Jodi Rosko

We had a wooden um it hung in our my our house. It was a wooden um cabbage, it like shredded cabbage. So the so there was a box that went back and forth and a very kind of rusty old looking um, you know, grater, whatever. Yeah, what a giant grater that would grate big cabbage of cabbage and that hung on our wall and it was my great-grandpa's and you know, whatever. Yeah. It's just funny, but that you know, it's time has passed, I guess, when I was saying tools and things like that. That's what I was thinking about.

Heather Fisher

Yeah, yeah. So um I looked up the word legacy just just to find the actual definition of it. And the definition is the long-lasting impact of particular events, actions, etc., that took place in the past or of a person's life. So I think that for things to remain a legacy moving forward, for things to be the right things to stay in a family for generations, you can't lose sight of that word impact. Is this something that is continuing to impact your family by being the tray that you bring out at the holidays every year? Is it the thing that, you know, you sit around on Christmas Eve and read this story together in the book that, you know, is been passed down? Is it whatever that is, fill in the blank, is it continuing to have an impact on your family, or is it just stuff that's old? And so that difference right there, when I read that definition, when I looked that up, that that felt like the key question to ask. If it's just in a box or it's just there because it's been there a long time, or passed down multiple generations, but there's no continuing impact, those are not the things to keep.

Jodi Rosko

Because there's no more story. And the story w we we only have stories around things that we're living with closely, using, you know, whatever that looks like, the tray that does come out at the holidays. If there's one that's in the you know, storage area that is not ever coming out, there will be no more stories for the next generation, and therefore it will be totally meaningless to the next generation.

Heather Fisher

Yeah, I have um items from my grandparents' house, you know, things that we chose. My grandparents have been gone for for many years, and those items, because of why I have those couple of things, they're important to me and I love and treasure them. But if someone came up to me on the street and, you know, introduced themselves and said, Hey, I've been hanging on to this, you know, this used to be in your grandparents' kitchen, and it's not something that I've seen in 25 years. It's not something I remember from my store. It's just something. And I think that happens with just boxes of stuff. And you wouldn't take that, you wouldn't be like, oh, well, because it was my grandpa. Because it was my grandpa's, I'll take it. I mean, that isn't a dynamic that we would w jump at, but it just follows us down down that train.

Jodi Rosko

Yeah. Yeah. I think I think memories are only created when you're using it and caring about it and seeing it daily and so and telling the story over and over again, right? Yeah.

Heather Fisher

Just hearing that story in your head and enjoying it.

Jodi Rosko

Yeah. Yeah. So if if you have that's probably the easiest place to start, honestly, is the stuff that's stored. Because you've already told yourself in a not so many words that it's not something that needs to be part of your everyday. Yeah, that's exactly right. That's the stuff. If you're never pulling it out, you've already made that decision. Now you're just keeping it because you can't make that final decision to let it go because you somehow have some level of guilt around it, probably. So guilt's not a gift, right?

Heather Fisher

That's right. So if you're starting and you are starting to go through these uh these things to decide um what to do, the four categories, not different than what we've talked about many times. Um, but there will be things that you do want to keep. They're irreplaceable, they're already labeled, they're meaningful. They're those things that you are honoring by how you've treated them up to this point. Um there are things you can digitize, uh just photos of items, and um, you know, turn that into a memory book or or some other form of keeping it without keeping the item. Um, this is a big one. Share that. And if there's no recipients wanting the things, that's okay. They don't need to be gilted into it either, but that's the key that it's okay to release those things.

Jodi Rosko

Ask. I mean, always ask because you don't know if there they have memories around something that you don't, right? You know, there might be some candy dish that they remember and you don't, or some table or something that's there's there's a reason that they have memories around it. Um, but don't be upset if they don't want it. If you're already saying you don't want it and they don't want it, then you know, again, we don't need to pass that guilt on. It's just it's just okay to let it go.

Heather Fisher

Yep, and then as always, um either donating, recycling, selling items, um Or just sometimes it's a discard of broken or unusable items.

Jodi Rosko

Yeah, and so use labels as you sort that. Um put tell the story about the things. Um if there are things that you're keeping, why are you keeping them? And really is that a legacy to of that person that you're keeping them from? Um or if it's your own stuff, is it a legacy of you for you? Like what when you look at yourself, what is it that you want people to remember about you, or what of your loved ones do you want to remember about them? And if it you write down those those things, what is that legacy and then does this fit inside of those inside of one of those? Yeah. Does this make you, you know, maybe they were really into music and you have their guitar and that's super amazing to you? And so that is totally a legacy. That that was their thing, and it reminds you of that.

Heather Fisher

So I think that goes back to I mean, multiple episodes we've done, but that um you know, putting words to what that legacy is and and really thinking about it and coming up with a plan, write down those five words. I know you've said before about your grandma that cooking would be one of those. That that's your those are your parameters and your rules. Narrow that down to three to five of this. And if it fits in those, then that's a starting point for the maybe items. But if it's not even surrounding those top words about the person, it's not um uh important. It's the table from target.

Jodi Rosko

Right, exactly. Yeah. So and and if you have photos and you want to keep those photos, make sure you're writing um on the back of them or or or if you don't want to damage them, use the sticky note or do something to say who's in the photo, where it was taken, as much as you know the date, like whatever it is around that, so that um because I we just did another episode um about photos, and I have a ton of them, and I am a hundred percent sure that there will be uh photos that we don't know who who they are anymore. And at that point, we don't need to keep them, unfortunately, because there is no story around them when there's just people in there that you don't know. But if you don't want to lose those stories, then it's your job to tell the stories. Yeah, both verbally now and also write that down.

Heather Fisher

Yeah, I think that um sets up perfectly for revisiting the idea of you know a memory sorting event or day with your family because you tackle so many things all at once. It's help so you're not overwhelmed with it by yourself, but other people from different generations or different um interactions may be able to fill in some of those gaps on the photos you don't know and you know disperse them appropriately. You know, if you've got younger generations there with you, they hear the stories in that room with the older generations as you're sorting it all, and then at the end of the day it's flushed out to we've got a pile where we don't need, we don't know who they were, they weren't important, we've got what everybody wants to keep for their own memories, and you've shared a great evening or day doing that as a family. I think that's the key if you can figure out the best way to get everybody in the same room. Uh it turns it into much more of a memory instead of a burden.

Jodi Rosko

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and it it's it feels warm and you know, it feels like you're reminiscing and you know you can have those memories together. I think that's that's which is the objective the things and the photos. So Right Yeah. Right. So yeah, I need to plan that for my family. So that's on the that is on the on the books for me.

Heather Fisher

Well, hopefully we're motivating lots of listeners and you and I'll just have to keep listening because it's one we'll hear all about all the events everybody had to to sort down through their family legacy.

Jodi Rosko

So sometimes you end up with you know collections of things, um, dishes, all kinds of stuff. So Anan or my grandma gave me uh her teacups, and um it was like fifty or sixty of them, and that was too much for for me. But she always had high tea, like they loved to have tea with my kids, and they would do the whole thing. They would make tea and biscuits and all the things. And so uh e my kids each took a teacup and I took a teacup that was our favorite ones, and so we can have tea and remember them, and you can, you know, break that down. Don't always feel like you have to keep everything. Yeah. Um that is that's we can still have that same process and think about them without keeping fifty teacups.

Heather Fisher

Yeah, I think that is always the way to go because then it makes it something you can use and put out and enjoy versus store.

Jodi Rosko

Same thing with my mom's Christmas dishes. I just kept the the salad plates, so when I set the Christmas table, I have white dishes, but her salad plates are are are poinsettas. And so if you put those on top of the white, they just look like the whole table still looks like the whole Christmas table that she had without every teacup and big plate and uh everything that she had. So there's ways that you can still honor it.

Heather Fisher

Yeah, I know you've mentioned you've done a uh recipe book from your grandma's recipes. Um I know I have friends that have taken um their wedding dress or uh an heirloom wedding dress and turned that into smaller um things instead of expecting someone wants to wear that wedding dress in the form that it is, a you know, it could be a christening gown or a cute one that had purses.

Jodi Rosko

They made the the little purses, their wedding purse out of their wedding dress, which I thought was cute. Yeah, something from Flower Girl.

Heather Fisher

I mean there's lots of ways. Baptism, yeah.

Jodi Rosko

Yes. Outfits, yeah, handkerchiefs. Like there's so many, there's some really cool. If you start looking online for some of that stuff, you will find some people, they make teddy bears, they do all kinds of interesting things with them that um that is a good repurpose. And as and two, it can make more than one, right?

Heather Fisher

That's what I was gonna say. Yeah, you can share that among, you know, grandkids or or whatnot to just have a small token. Um, you know, I've seen people take someone's, you know, whole bunch of flannel shirts and turn it into one small stuffed animal for each grandkid. There's there's lots of ways where you can take a a big thing that that may feel like these are the legacy items, but make it more manageable than the the use that it originally was. Yeah. And you're still honoring that memory and you're turning it into new memories, and you're, you know, just adding to the story, not forgetting it. Yeah.

Jodi Rosko

Yeah. That purse then, if you did that and made your wedding dress into a purse, now that purse is a story all on its own for your daughter or whatever, and then you know, she could pass that on or not. She, you know, whatever, but it's just an interesting, it it keeps the story going.

Heather Fisher

Yeah, absolutely. Um, tools uh for preserving stories without all of the stuff, and we've talked about it before. Um there are websites and apps you can do. Um, my family has done story worth, and we had a good experience with that. Um it doesn't have to be um, you know, an official company, it can just be a journal with story prompts, um, you know, as you're going through things and saying them out loud, um, just writing those and condensing what you remember into a journal is a great way to do that. Um, making um uh a family photo storage online if you've got a lot of physical photos and you just want to make them available for whoever wants to go through them. You know, there's different companies where you can have shared storage.

Jodi Rosko

So digitize the photos and then share it with the whole family.

Heather Fisher

Yep, that's a great idea for reducing it, but not losing that. Um there are companies that you can take a whole bunch, you know, from old photos to um slides and and things like that and send it away and have it come back all on a thumb drive or a different version that's much more manageable uh if those are important for you to keep, but not wanting to to store reels of you know film or the slide deck. What what are those the round things where all the the slides were in? Yes. You just put it in the projectors. Projectors, yep. Yeah, that's a lot. So um just kind of condensing it and making it more shareable and more manageable um is what you want to do.

Jodi Rosko

Yeah, so you're thinking about the legacy, and it's not a thousand things, you know, the legacy can just be summed up in a few things.

Heather Fisher

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Um so you're keeping the memory, not the object, and you know, you're not dishonoring someone, you know, someone's life by uh taking the most important pieces and remembering them and displaying them and honoring it. You're you're really doing what you should be doing instead of way too much in a bunch of dusty boxes.

Jodi Rosko

Yeah, that's not honoring it and or remembering it in a way if it's just in storage.

Heather Fisher

Yeah.

Jodi Rosko

Yeah. Yeah. So you're not being forgotten. The stuff isn't being forgotten or the person isn't being forgotten. The stuff is just being released. And to be honest, the stuff, if it's just in storage or not being used, somebody else can use it and will want to use it. And so things should should be living a life of their own. Yeah. Um, and so if they aren't doing that in your storage area, let them go live their life.

Heather Fisher

Yeah, and honestly, uh you're if you're walking with the burden of the stuff and it's weighing on you and frustrating you that it's so much. I mean, it is almost tarnishing that legacy and that relationship with the person a little bit because that frustration is transferring to your guilt and and your memories with that person. You're just moving forward with a frustration of all that you have to deal with. So preserve the wonderful memories and and release the burden.

Jodi Rosko

And and don't feel like it has to be perfect, right? It doesn't have to be perfect. It just it just you won't capture everything about a person, but you'll you'll be able to get enough of that legacy that when you look at those certain things that you think, oh my gosh, I love that thing, and they loved that thing, and this is that story around that thing, and that just makes me so happy to think about them. That's you need to be able to look at that thing and feel deep emotional uh uh something about that person or about how it talks it about yourself, like w what it's saying about you to others. Uh, if you don't feel any deep emotion about it and it just looks like a thing, then then it's time for it to go.

Heather Fisher

Yeah, absolutely. So asking yourself, you know, what story do you want the future generations, your children or grandchildren or nieces or nephews, what story do you want them to hear? Um, and you get to choose what carries forward and then release the guilt on what doesn't have to. You know that's freeing in and of itself to do that. Yeah. And if you're carrying the burden and it's just not what you want to be doing, it's okay to just ask, you know, would anyone else like to manage these family items? And if no one steps up, it's okay to release release them. It doesn't have to be your burden alone to carry.

Jodi Rosko

Yep. Yep.

Heather Fisher

Yeah, so um before we wrap up today, I think um we just wanted to take a moment to thank one of our listeners, Donna. She sent us the sweetest email. So nice. We um appreciate the feedback so much. Uh she's getting ready to make a big move from Pennsylvania to Tennessee uh with her husband and just wrote just the sweetest email that could ever be telling us how much she appreciated listening to our podcast as she was um, you know, getting ready for a move that they were doing a little sooner than planned. So she's you know got a deadline to work towards and um she just said that uh you know we help her stay grounded and focused, and she most especially loved um that we had reminded her to stay dreamy. I loved that at the end. Yeah, and it and that was actually what helped them decide to make the move sooner, to be closer to family and and to go with the flow when plans changed a little bit. So um, Donna, we appreciate you. We we hope you keep listening and uh we hope that we're touching other people in that way. That is most important to us is just helping people stay dreamy and stay focused and get through it. And as we've said on many episodes, we're we're right there with you uh working through all of this together.

Jodi Rosko

Yep. So if you need anything else, um downsizingroadmap.com, check us out for more information about things. Thank you again, Donna. You made my day. Um, and we'll talk to you all next time.

Heather Fisher

Yep, thank you. Thanks for joining us on the Downsizing Roadmap Podcast. If you found this episode helpful, be sure to subscribe, leave us a review, and share it with someone who might need a little downsizing inspiration. Have questions or ideas for future episodes? It's on our website, www.downsizingroadmap.com. Until next time, let's keep simplifying and moving forward.

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Heather Fisher

Host
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Jodi Rosko

Host