Label three boxes as trash, donate, or store. Every day, make sure there's one thing in each box. When you move to a smaller house, you naturally won't have as much space for all the items you've accumulated over the years. Before you start packing, you'll need to take an inventory of your belongings.
Divide large tasks into smaller action steps that you can tackle little by little each day until the work is done. For example, if you know that you have a linen closet full of items that need to be sorted and packed, occupy one shelf a day for an hour at a time until the closet is empty. Once you've made the general decisions and made some progress in the cleaning process, it's time to start downsizing your house room by room. If you're downsizing your house to move to an apartment or condo, you'll most likely have to part with certain furniture. A little bit of pre-planning, such as taking action, creating a design, and deciding on an aesthetic, can help determine what you keep or eliminate during downsizing.
Reducing your staff is important because it means leaving aside older, unused possessions and having less to sort, organize, and pack before you move in. If you're reducing your headcount due to the death of your spouse, seek help from family or friends; it can be especially difficult to make decisions about what you're going to keep if you're still grieving a loss. It can be difficult to get used to this practice, but it can really help alleviate the emotional impact of the reduction of staff. Downsizing a house is when you reduce the amount of things you currently have in your house to eventually move from a large house to a smaller one.
While downsizing may initially seem scary, both physically and emotionally, you can make the task much less overwhelming by dividing it up into the previous steps. Tidying up is quite a journey, so take more time than you think you'll need to plan the move and reduce the size of your belongings. Eliminate the stress of having to rush to purge everything and allow yourself to reflect and make rational decisions about what you should reduce your size and tidy up. With that information, you'll be able to sort and, if necessary, downsize from an informed perspective.
If moving is on your to-do list, Laura Cattano, a veteran interior stylist and professional organizer, offers some expert advice to help you downsize and organize your things before you move in. But when it comes to reducing the size of your home's physical rooms, where should you start? A great strategy is to start small, literally.
