Organizing a Major Downsize: Where to Start

 

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At some point in your life, you might downsize your home. There are lots of reasons for doing this. You might want or need to save money, or perhaps you're downsizing after your kids have moved out. You could need to downsize because you're moving to a more expensive area and can't afford to have a home the size of your last one. Whatever your reason for downsizing, it can be complicated to move from a larger home to a smaller one. For one thing, you have a lot of stuff and might not be able to move it all. So where do you start?

Declutter All at Once

Before you move, you should declutter your home and get rid of anything that you don't want to take with you. If you don't want to spend a long time picking through all your stuff and deciding what to keep and what to get rid of, consider just decluttering all at once. You could find estate sale companies that will help you to sell your stuff so that you can do it quickly and get good money for your things. It could be a good choice if you want to get rid of most or all of your things and start over.

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Decide What's Coming with You

If you are willing to sort through all of your things, you need to decide what's coming with you and what isn't. There's no point taking stuff to your new home if it's just going to sit in boxes until you finally get rid of it. It would just be a waste of time and money. So before you move, go through your things and decide what's coming with you and what isn't. Don't leave it until the last minute to get this done. It can sometimes be hard to let go of things, even if you don't need them anymore and they don't really have a lot of meaning to you.

Take the Chance to Buy New Things

You might be trying to get rid of things that you don't need, but downsizing can also be a good opportunity to get new things. Of course, you don't want to buy unnecessary clutter, but perhaps moving to a smaller home is the perfect excuse to get a new bed to replace an old one or buy some new furniture that's a better fit for your smaller home.

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Avoid Renting a Storage Unit

Sometimes you might see advice to rent a storage unit when you're downsizing. This can be a useful thing to do when you're trying to sort out your stuff, but it's probably not a good idea to do it long-term. If you keep stuff in a storage unit, are you going to get around to sorting through it? Will you ever really need to go and get stuff out of it? If it's just going to hold extra stuff forever, it might just be better to sell the things that you don't use.

Downsizing can be difficult, but you can make it easier by being a little tough with yourself to decide what to sell and what to keep.