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Downsizing Tips

Whether you’re an empty nester transitioning from a three-bedroom home to a condo or a renter who is going from a one-bedroom apartment to your parent’s basement, downsizing means you might have to part with some of your possessions. Here are some tips to help make this transition a little less painful.

 

1. Focus on your end goal. Whatever your case, making this move in your life is probably bringing you some sort of benefit. It might be the satisfaction of not cleaning the bedrooms and bathrooms you don’t use anymore. Or you may be saving money in order to eventually buy that dream house that is currently out of reach. Whatever your situation might be, make sure to remind yourself of why you are downsizing and the benefits of doing so.

 

2. Write out a list of all your sentimental treasures. Here’s the deal: if you go from room to room you collecting all of your sentimental items, you might run out of space quickly. But if you sit down and write out a list from memory of items in your home that hold high sentimental value, you’ll come out really keeping the items that mean most to you and less stuff that you “kind of like.” Take pictures of items that have memories attached but have no function in your home. Don’t end up on an episode of “Hoarders”…keep the stuff that means the most, and chuck the rest.

 

3. If you haven’t used it in a year, toss it. This can go for just about anything: clothes, DVD’s, gardening tool, etc. If you don’t use it now, you certainly won’t have any use for it when you move into your smaller space.

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