When we decided to move, we knew that downsizing was the best choice for our family. It wasn’t easy to downsize, pack, move and unpack all while 9 months pregnant 🤪, but we did it and we’re loving our new home. Here are a few lessons I learned while making the transition!
It might get harder before it gets easier.
Selling and organizing things take work. Getting rid of duplicates and stuff that just don’t make sense in a new space takes time and energy – and it’s not very rewarding at first, it’s actually pretty messy. We had to sell a ton of our furniture from the previous home – simply because we didn’t have the space for it in the new home or didn’t need it anymore. This was a great thing to make some extra money off of our things – but it took a while and it took diligence to be able to sell everything.
Organizing may be an investment at first.
Downsizing for us meant we lost a lot of our closet space and storage space.
There are ways to do this on a budget. But, at the end of the day – setting up proper organization will cost money. For us, we had to pay for all the closets to be customized. We needed shelving for linens, household items, kids’ things like art supplies, etc. We also moved into a much smaller bedroom space without room for a dresser. So the closets needed to have drawers and shelving.
Other things we needed to invest in were things like garage storage. In order for our garage space to work – we wanted shelving, hooks, and cabinets to store things like toys, lawn equipment, tools, and sports gear.
Lastly and a little lower on the budget – we invested in bins and baskets to keep things more organized. The toughest part for us to organize was under the sinks in the bathrooms. We lost a lot of storage space in our bathroom vanities. It was tough to figure out how to store toiletries and bathroom items in one single cabinet.
Things are going to take longer than you hope and expect.
Whether you are waiting for companies to come in and help you with installing shelving or cabinets or you are simply going through everything and making countless runs to the donation center – it just takes a lot of time. My husband and I are unified in the way we like an organized and clean home. It’s tough to live in chaos! But, as we worked endlessly every single day we started to see progress!
The beautiful thing about downsizing is that you really get a GOOD look at what you have and what you actually want to keep in your home.
Our previous home was wonderfully spacious in many ways! There were closets everywhere and tons of storage. We had an attic AND a separate shed to store things. That sounds great, and parts of it were – but the downside is, with everything tucked away in many different locations. It’s easy to FORGET about what you have, and not use the things you have.
With this downsizing effort – it was really easy to reassign a living spot for each ‘thing’ we have. We got to take a look to see if we still wanted to store things. If we had too many of one thing, or if we just sort of outgrew the thing we were holding on to. We never had the option to do that at the old house. It was out of sight and out of mind.
Although this has been a TON of work – it has been a very rewarding experience for us to simplify and strip away the things that we really just don’t want or need anymore. Whether that’s linens, decor, holiday items, or household items. It was extremely gratifying to be able to see everything all at once and get rid of duplicates.
Eventually, a choice to downsize will likely be a wise decision financially but it will also give you a ton of peace of mind.
We have loved getting our things and our space organized in a way that works for our family.
We have found that when we have fewer maintenance responsibilities and less to clean and maintain, we have way more time, energy, and peace to do the things we want to do with our family. Downsizing created a lot of space for us to rest and be at peace. Our previous home was very high maintenance and always required work to be done either by us or hired out. We are relieved to have made a lot of changes to that! It has been a breath of fresh air.
Huge shout out to Clozetivity out of St. Pete for tackling our closets and Square 1 Garage Solutions for designing our garage space. This isn’t sponsored, we’re just so happy with how everything turned out!
