We Did.
When you decide to downsize from a 3,000-square-foot house into one that’s about 700 square feet smaller, eventually you have to face a pretty obvious question.
Where is all this stuff going to go?
We knew we couldn’t take everything with us.
What we didn’t realize was how many individual decisions we’d have to make before we could even start packing. Downsizing is challenging.
Two-Out One-In Rule
I’ve actually tried for years to keep the amount of stuff I own under control.
When I buy something like clothing, home decor or a knickknack that needs a designated place in our house, I try to donate two things for every one thing I bring home.
I’m not talking about replacing a table or buying a major piece of furniture. This is more about the everyday things that slowly accumulate without you realizing it.
One new shirt comes home, two shirts leave.
A new decorative item needs a place to live, so something else needs to go.
That’s my rule. Not Mark’s. Mine.
And for the most part, it has worked pretty well.
But apparently even a two-out, one-in rule doesn’t completely prepare you to lose 700 square feet.
The Things You See Aren’t Necessarily the Problem
When you have an open-concept home, clutter is not your friend. We really didn’t have an enormous amount of stuff displayed around our house.
That wasn’t where the problem was hiding.
The problem was everything you didn’t see…like on the back side of the island. Those cabinets were filled with cookbooks and candles.
And in the attic and in the mud room – seasonal decorations.
Things tucked into closets. Things stored in cabinets.
Boxes we hadn’t opened in a while.
And in Mark’s case, tools. Lots of tools, boards and things to make woodworking projects, including items he hadn’t used in years but kept because, well, he might need them someday.
When you have enough space, those things are easy to keep.
When you’re downsizing your home, suddenly every one of them has to justify making the move.
We Had to Touch Almost Everything We Owned
As I packed, I developed a pretty simple system.
If something was already hanging on a wall, sitting on a table or being used regularly, I generally knew I wanted it in the new house. It was in its place because I loved it enough to display it. Those decisions were easy – they really weren’t decisions at all.
The harder decisions were the things that had been tucked away. Candles, mugs, cookbooks, etc.
I’d pick something up and hold it for a moment.
Do I actually use this? Most of the time the answer was no.
Do I still like it? Most of the time the answer was yes (unless it was a gift someone gave me that I couldn’t part with in the past).
When was the last time I wore this or used this?
Do I have somewhere for this in the new house?
Am I keeping it because I want it, or because I’ve had it for a long time?
And perhaps the most important question:
Is this worth using some of our limited space in the new house?
Sometimes the answer came immediately, as with the candles. Donate them or toss them. Sometimes an item sat in my hand for a little longer.
But I couldn’t deliberate over everything forever. I had an entire house to pack.
So eventually, I made the decision.
Keep it. Donate it. Let it go.
And move on to the next thing.
(And sometimes you find something you never realized you kept – see below)
Mark Had a Much Bigger Downsizing Problem
My difficult decisions tended to involve clothes, seasonal things and items we’d accumulated over the years.
Mark had a different challenge – his workshop.
He was going from a three-car plus garage to a one-car garage.
And if we’re being truthful, this is one part of the move we didn’t plan particularly well.
Mark had years’ worth of tools and workshop supplies. Some he used regularly. Others he hadn’t touched in years but kept because he might need them someday.
Normally, this would have been the perfect time to go through everything.
Keep what you use – sell or donate what you don’t.
Organize what will fit in the new workshop.
We didn’t do that. I couldn’t help him pack his garage. I didn’t know what was truly valuable to him.
Mark was already spending an enormous amount of time working on the renovation and overseeing contractors. Also, it was the beginning of the spring real estate market and we were busy selling homes. At the same time, we were packing our house and trying to get everything moved or into storage.
Something had to give and in this case, it was the garage.
A lot of Mark’s workshop ended up going into a storage unit with the idea that we’d deal with it later.
And here’s the lesson.
Later has a funny way of becoming much later.
To this day, we still have garage and workshop items, along with a couple of cat perches, sitting in a storage unit waiting for Mark to have enough time to go through them. I can tell you, the cat perches will be headed to the dump or a rescue. We have nowhere to put them (we currently have 6 at the new house).
If you’re downsizing your home and you have the luxury of time, learn from us.
Don’t just concentrate on your closets and the rooms inside your house.
Go through the garage. Go through the attic. Go through the shed. Go through the workshop.
It’s much easier to decide what you don’t need before you pay to move and store it.
We learned that one the expensive way.
Some Things We Knew Wouldn’t Fit
Then there were the bigger decisions.
We knew our dining room table wasn’t going to work in the new house, so we knew we would have to sell it.
But even that required some planning.
We didn’t want to sell it too early. There was a member of the family whose needs had to be considered.
Pete.
One of Pete’s favorite places to sleep was on a chair under the dining room table. Apparently, we weren’t just selling furniture. We were selling where our 4-year-old cat spent a good portion of his day.
So, the timing had to be just right and when I sold it, I put a box where his chair used to be. Cats love a box and Pete is no exception. However the box wasn’t enough but I’ll get into that later.
Then there was our couch. Calling it a couch might actually be an understatement.
It was a 16-foot sectional – Couchzilla.
I love Couchzilla and didn’t want to part with it.
It worked in our previous house because we had a living room almost as large as a pickleball court.
The new house didn’t.
At first, that seemed to mean we’d have to get rid of the sectional too. This was the first time I felt like things were getting really hard.
Then I started looking at it differently.
What if we didn’t keep it together?
We realized we could reconfigure the sectional so part of it would work downstairs and another part could go upstairs.
Suddenly, something that didn’t fit actually did.
Just not in the way we’d been using it.
That became another lesson in downsizing.
Before getting rid of something you really like, ask whether it can serve a different purpose or work somewhere else in the new house.
A Plan for Moving Day
Once we knew the sectional was going to two different floors, I could already picture what would happen on moving day.
A mover would be standing in the doorway holding one end of a very large piece of couch asking:
“Where does this go?”
And I didn’t want to make that decision while people were carrying furniture through the house.
So, I planned it ahead of time.
I created a sheet that showed exactly which pieces of the sectional stayed downstairs and which pieces needed to go upstairs.
I put the sheet in a moving box so it would be readily available when the furniture arrived.
The goal was simple.
When the movers walked through the door, I wanted to be able to tell them immediately where everything went.
No guessing.
No moving a giant sectional piece upstairs and then deciding it belonged downstairs.
No paying movers to move the same furniture twice.
At least, that was the idea.
There Were Things We Couldn’t Donate
Of course, not everything could simply go into a donation pile or be reconfigured.
We were taking our shed. We were taking our hot tub.
Those required entirely different moving plans.
The shed had to be physically relocated from one property to the other.
The hot tub had to be disconnected, moved and eventually set back up at the new house on a newly installed pad.
And because the new house was going to be under renovation during our six-week rent back, we couldn’t simply move all of our furniture and belongings directly into it.
Instead, we moved our boxed belongings into the now-empty garage.
That became another part of our moving and storage plan.
If we wouldn’t need it during the next six weeks, an item could go into the garage while contractors worked on the new house. Not ideal but better than renting a second storage unit.
At the end of the six weeks, we’d move everything out of the storage unit, garage and house and into our newly renovated home.
Simple enough.
Or so we thought.
Moving Makes You Look at Your Belongings Differently
There’s something interesting that happens when you realize you’re going to pay someone to pick something up, move it into storage and then eventually pay to move it again. You start looking at that item differently. Do I like this enough to pack it/move it/store it/and move it again?
If the answer isn’t yes, maybe this is the time to let it go.
And, I did.
That was probably one of the biggest lessons for us.
You don’t necessarily realize how much you own until every single thing needs a destination.
We Thought We Had It Figured Out
Eventually, the piles got smaller.
Things were donated.
The dining room table found a new home.
Boxes were packed.
We figured out how to turn one enormous sectional into furniture for two different rooms.
We had one storage unit piled high with Mark’s workshop.
We had plans for moving the shed and the hot tub.
And we had six weeks to get the renovation finished before everything needed to come back together again.
It was a lot of moving parts, but we had a plan.
We thought we knew where everything was going.
We were wrong.
But we’ll get to that.
First, we had six weeks and a house that needed a whole lot of work.
Until next time…
Lisa & Mark Adams
Mark Adams & Associates
eXp Realty
office@markadamsteam.com
804-237-8585
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