Moving Forward
My family and I just moved into a new house with 700 sq ft less than what we had in our previous house. This new house also has a smaller lot as it sits on a simplified plot. Our previous house had almost an acre of land containing a small creek, a wildflower patch, two decks, a front porch and a separate fire pit. It was beautiful! However, it was a lot to maintain and keep up with the weeds, flooding and endless number of other tasks that needed to be done. We loved our previous house and all the space and privacy it provided for our growing family of 5. However, the space did require a lot of time to maintain and clean while keeping up with children’s activities, school and businesses. I felt myself feeling spread thin, did not have enough time to upkeep my home and the commute driving our children to all their activities was draining. Moving into town to be closer to schools, activities, the community center and the in-town office for my husband and I seemed to be a good idea for us. With being in a hectic season of life raising a family and owning a business, I felt a huge pull to own less. The journey of downsizing and owning less is not always easy. However, the benefits are huge and worth the process! It takes a lot of intention and a positive mindset fixated on the long-term goals of the freedom of owning less and simplifying our lives where we can.
Here are a few tips that I would share with anyone who is thinking about going on a similar journey with downsizing their home:
1) Moving to a new house with smaller living areas required a lot of prep work to downsize the amount of stuff we owned - furniture, items, décor, toys & more! Do the work before you place your current home on the market and donate/sell/giveaway all the items you do not use anymore. Do yourself a big favor and do the prep work ahead of time to not bring any of the clutter into your new smaller home!
2) When you move into the new home and go through moving boxes, take this opportunity to make more decisions on if this item will stay in your new home or not. If not, start another pile to donate or sell! I chose to donate many of our items to my local food pantry. It felt good to give back to my community in this way and it was WAY less time consuming than selling each item. In this process I am choosing to value my time above my items so it was fitting to choose the easiest/less time-consuming way to offload my extra items.
3) If you have children, take time with each of them individually to talk about toys, clothes and art supplies to see what they want to keep and what they can let go of. Kids are very visual, so seeing their new room (and what they want it to look like) will make their decisions on keeping/getting rid of items easier.
4) Think about the main goals or priorities of your family. One of our goals is to be outside more, so we found a house near lots of parks and by a canal that we have access to. The tradeoff for easy outdoor living made losing the larger space indoors a bit easier to swallow.
5) When downsizing your house, make sure you don’t downsize areas that help your family function. In our case, we did not want to downsize the bathrooms or kitchen. We actually have one more bathroom and the same size kitchen (if not a tad bigger) in the new house. If you find a house with a great layout, less square footage isn’t a bad thing. You will likely find that the smaller space is just as, if not more functional, than your previous house!
Looking back on the experience now, this was my hardest move I've ever done in my adult life. However, the hard was so worth it because we are exactly where we want to be with our family.
Are you looking to move in the near future? Hiring a professional organizer can definitely aid you in downsizing in any stage of your life and help make the transition as smooth as possible!
