Downsizing Your Home

Downsizing Your Home

When the time comes to move, it’s an opportunity to downsize! To reduce and simplify possessions. Whether you’re moving to a smaller home, helping to Move Elderly Parents or Merging Households, often downsizing, the act of eliminating, will be part of the process.

Determine Current Needs

Look at the needs of your life presently, or the life of the person moving, to see what items and belongings are needed and used regularly. When going through each room, assess everything, to see if it has a place in the next phase of your life. If some of the items have great meaning, sentimentally or financially and letting go of them is not an option, consider storing these items in a storage facility or at a friend or relatives home.

Layout Of The New Home

If your able to obtain the blueprints or a layout of the new home with accurate measurements and storage areas, this will help make decisions about what can be moved, and what cannot be moved into the new space.

Decide Who Will Get The Items

Before you begin sorting through the home and getting rid of things, think about where all the stuff will go. Will it be sold? Given to relatives or friends? Will some things be donated to charity? Perhaps you will rent a storage unit and store some or all of the items. Make a list of where the larger items will go, and plan to either label each item with its destination, or begin making piles. This way, once you begin going through the home, you will have a system in place.

Where To Begin

The best places to begin, especially if the home is still being lived in, are places such as the garage, attic, basement and any rooms that are not used regularly. Having one of these spaces empty can also provide you space to place any items that you will be getting rid of. In addition to housing these items, it can also serve as a sorting and packing room.

Once you are ready to sort through the “everyday” stuff, make sure to go through every cabinet, closet, drawer, and storage space. If you’re in the purging process, only put back what is used and what is to be kept. Everything else will be placed in its designated pile to be sold or given away. If you are packing at the same time as downsizing, the same method applies, of only packing items that are to be kept.

Remember to ask yourself some questions when deciding what to keep and what to let go of. If you need time to decide on certain items, move to another area, and go back to it after a while. Here are a few suggested questions:

• Will it fit into the new space?
• How often is the item used?
• Can it be replaced?
• Does it hold value? Sentimental or financial?
• Does it need repairing? What would the cost be?
• Could someone else use and enjoy it more than you?

Once you have downsized, you will feel lighter and have only your favorite and needed items in your home. You will feel the simplicity of having less stuff!