Sellers: How You Can Downsize Efficiently

Once you've decided to sell your home, there is one question that looms large, hanging over your head like a heavy weight. What am I going to do with all this stuff? The question is especially relevant if you will be downsizing into a smaller house.

If you have lived in your current home for an extended period of time, the problem may be just that much worse. The accumulation of life's stuff is easy to put out of sight and out of mind during the day-to-day bustle. But when it is time to start packing and getting a home ready to sell, it can be like an avalanche bursting forth from every corner.

What's the best way to start downsizing your life and do it efficiently? It may sound easy — keep the stuff you need and purge the stuff you don't — but if you aren't careful how you do it, you can create more problems for yourself than just having too much junk.

Have a Plan to Ease the Pain

• Start with the big stuff. If you are selling your three-bedroom home to move into a two-bedroom home, there's no need to move that extra bedroom furniture. It's just not needed. Take that approach with the rest of your home as well. Consider the space you are moving into and what you will need to fill it.
  
  
• Be cautious. It can be easy to get on a "get rid of it" kick when it comes to smaller items, but be careful. Some things you know you will never need again, sell or donate. For other things that you are on the fence about, separate boxes into "must keep" and "maybe keep" boxes. That way, you can adjust as needed if your new home has the space to accommodate more of your things.
  
  It also helps to think about your belongings like this: If they were all wiped away by a fire, what would I replace and in what order would I replace them. It can be counter-productive to aggressively downsize, only to find that you need to re-buy things when you get in to your new home.
  
  
• Go through those boxes again. Do you have boxes of keepsakes or mementos that you just couldn't live without but have never been unpacked from your previous home? Go through those boxes again, separating what's truly needed from what will never be missed.
  
  
• Some space hogs can be effectively downsized without disappearing from your life. Take this opportunity to digitize old photos, CDs, DVDs or even VHS tapes. Uploading them to the cloud keeps them accessible while reducing the amount of stuff you have to move.
  
  
• One year rule. When selling your home and downsizing, it helps to follow one simple rule: If you haven't used it in the last year, get rid of it.

Take your new uncluttered attitude with you into your new home. Recognize clutter culprits in your old home and take pains to reduce what can build up in your new one. The easiest stuff to get rid of is the stuff you never accumulate.

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