Whether you’re moving into a smaller place, looking to be more organized, or overwhelmed with clutter, downsizing can be challenging. When it’s time to downsize your belongings, the hardest part is knowing what to keep and what to toss. The key thing to remember is that downsizing isn’t an overnight affair. It took years to accumulate the belongings you currently have, so you’re not going to downsize them in a couple of hours. Furthermore, getting rid of your belongings is usually an emotional process if you have a lot of sentimental things. Not to mention, if you rush the process, it can quickly become a stressful process that you’ll ultimately walk away from.
So, instead of trying to attack the clutter blindly in a single day, plan out your downsizing process over a couple of weeks and take it room by room. But how do you know what to get rid of? Today, we’ll examine some tips for downsizing and how to understand what you should be tossing and what’s worth keeping.
Find a quality storage unit to start the process.
After you’ve determined a reasonable timeline for going through your clutter, the first step is to book a storage unit near you to sort through your belongings. At first glance, this may seem counterproductive as you’re just moving one mess to another location. However, you’re only using this storage unit as a temporary storage option to free up room in your home while you downsize.
Your storage unit should act as a sorting table where you can store belongings that you’re unsure whether you want to keep or toss. This way, you can have two clear piles of “keep” items and “toss” items at your physical home. Furthermore, it can act as an indicator to help you decide on those unsure items. For example, if you chose to store that decorative sign your mom got you five years ago, and you didn’t notice it was gone during the entire downsizing process, you should probably go ahead and toss it.
Don’t let guilt stop you from organizing your home.
So many people inherit items and keep them purely out of guilt. However, now is the perfect time to relieve the burden and let go of those items you’re holding on to for no other reason than guilt. If you received a gift or inherited something from a loved one that you don’t use, you have to remember that they didn’t give you that item to burden you. It was meant to help you or make you happy, and it likely did for some time. However, if it’s no longer bringing you joy, it did its job, and now it’s time to let it go. Make a list of all the things you’ve received or inherited, and ask yourself if you still enjoy having this thing in your life. If the answer is no, then let it go. Furthermore, if you don’t want to see that item go into the trash, sell or donate it so that it can bring someone else the joy that it once brought you. This way, your loved one can continue to spread happiness, including making you happy by relieving the burden of holding on to that belonging.
Get rid of the duplicates around your house.
One of the easiest ways to determine whether you should keep or toss something is finding duplicates. For example, if you have four massive soup pots cluttering up your cabinets, toss a few of them. You likely will never have all four of those pots in use simultaneously anyway. So, find items that you have multiples of and toss, donate, or sell the ones you don’t need. This is the one part of the process that doesn’t require you to think critically about whether you need it or not.
Clean up your clutter and start organizing.
Now that you have a few methods for determining whether to keep or let go of your belongings, you should have no trouble downsizing!
