7 Tips on Downsizing Your Home

My family of three plus two dogs sold everything we owned and moved into a camper. 

Before we lived in a camper, our house wasn’t small.

In fact, it was a 2,200 square foot four bedroom and three bathroom house that had done nothing but collect junk. 

When we decided to downsize, we didn’t even know where to start.

We started paying attention to our surroundings a bit more and couldn’t believe how much we simply forgot about.

Whether you are looking to move into a camper like we are, you’re empty-nesters ready to downsize your home, or you simply just want to do a thorough spring cleaning, here are tips on how to get rid of your things and where to start:

Determine your goal

What do you actually want to accomplish? 

Are you trying to get rid of certain items?

Are you trying to feel more freedom?

Are you trying to move?

These answers will help you dictate a clearer plan of action and trust me, a plan is needed for such a big task.

Start small

On day 1, you might be motivated to go through your entire house and I hate to break it to you, but that simply won’t happen.

As time goes on, your motivation may go down. But splitting things into smaller and actionable steps will help keep you moving forward, even on the days you don’t want to. 

Start with one room at a time and break that room into even smaller categories.

For example, are you cleaning out your kitchen?

Rather than clumping “the kitchen” into one huge task, break it down into steps like this:

• Refrigerator

• Pantry

• Silverware

• Tupperware

• Pots and pans

• Coffee mugs

• And whatever else you have in your kitchen

Then, you don’t necessarily have to knock out an entire room at once. And if you only have a small amount of time to work, you can still feel like you’re accomplishing things which helps keep you motivated to continue. 

Accept the fact that things will get worse before they get better

Even though you’re in the mood to make everything look crystal clean, things will unfortunately look the opposite for quite some time. 

For us, we had five piles: 

Keep: Things that would go to our camper with us and that were worth packing up and moving

Sell: Things that weren’t of value to us anymore, but could be of value to other people and were worth something

Donate/Gift: Things that weren’t necessarily worth selling, things that we knew our friends needed, or popular items that were highly sought by charities 

Trash: Things that wouldn’t be of value to anybody

Storage: Sentimental items that we didn’t need in our day-to-day lives in the camper, but were still worth packing up and sending to storage for us to retrieve later

As you can imagine, some of these piles became quite large rather quickly and things looked a lot worse before they got better. 

We knew that we were moving in the right direction toward our goal - but that goal felt like miles away for quite some time. 

Go through more than one “purge”

We purged our items one time and felt like we had conquered the world. 

We were ready to start moving things into the camper, our home seemed practically empty, and we felt proud of ourselves for making so much progress.

That stress-free feeling was unfortunately only short-lived.

As we started moving stuff into the camper, we noticed that while our house looked empty, our camper looked full and we still did not have enough space for what we thought we wanted. 

Those items that passed “round 1” of purging were all of a sudden up for grabs again and we had no idea which items we would be keeping and which ones we wouldn’t be yet. 

We ended up purging our items three or four times before we were actually ready to move into the camper entirely and I wish we had gone into the process knowing this rather than assuming we were done after the first go-around.

Now, purging in rounds like this is a wonderful idea. It allows you to get rid of items you know you don’t want anymore.

Just acknowledge that as the purges keep going, the decisions become harder, and that’s just a part of the process. 

Utilize online tools like Facebook Marketplace for your larger items 

To get the biggest bang for your buck, utilize Facebook Marketplace for larger items such as furniture. 

I’ve noticed that using Facebook for clothing items, smaller home decor items or other random knick-knacks around the house typically isn’t worth the time and effort.

You have to organize a time to meet up with people, keep up with messages, and mark items as “sold” on Marketplace to avoid getting more messages and it’s honestly more hassle than anything when it comes to small items. 

However, items like couches, tables, lawnmowers, or tools will tend to sell more if you reach out to people beyond your own personal network and therefore is worth the effort of doing all these other tasks. 

Revisit items you’re on the fence about 

If you’re on the fence about something - that’s ok!

We personally utilized a relative's house for any items that had true sentimental value. 

We knew we didn’t want them to get thrown away, but having them in a specific place in the camper was going to be impossible. 

If you have the luxury of having a relative's house or a storage unit to utilize for the important stuff, you can err on the side of caution and keep things that you may think you truly will miss one day. 

Now, this doesn’t mean to keep everything. That defeats the entire purpose of this journey. But don’t get rid of something that truly means a lot to you, just because you are trying to save space.

It’s all about balance. 

It seemed like out of everything, clothes were the hardest to narrow down. We knew we could wear those shoes somewhere nice or we could match these pants with that one shirt we kept, and it felt like we thought of scenarios in which we could have used each and every piece of clothing we owned. 

But then, we looked back on time, wondered how many times we actually wore a certain piece of clothing, and realized that many items weren’t really as important as we once thought they were. 

Reset your mindset 

Probably the most beautiful part of this journey has been the mindset shift we’ve noticed.

Every time we traveled, I always wanted to get a t-shirt, a patch, and a shot

glass from every location we went to. As fun as it was to purchase everything, it all started collecting dust. 

Now, we’ve narrowed it down to purchasing pins for our son’s pin flag and we occasionally get t-shirts at some of our all-time favorite destinations. 

That’s it! 

When we go to these typical “tourist shops,” instead of walking around wondering how many things we can buy, we think about what would or wouldn’t prioritize in our lives enough for us to find space for it in our tiny camper. 

That mindset started leaking beyond traveling and tourist shops but continued in our everyday lives. 

I never realized just how much we purchased random items at the store or how excessive we went for his birthday or the holidays and how little that stuff actually meant to us. 

We naturally think less and it feels like a huge weight lifted on our shoulders. 

If you’re going to go through all the time, effort, and energy going through your entire house, make it count!

If you do ALL of these steps but don’t shift your mindset, your house will simply refill and your stress won’t actually go away, it’ll simply be pushed off to another day.

This mindset shift is truly one of the best parts of downsizing.

Conclusion

If you’re looking to downsize your home, understand that it will be a long and grueling journey but you’ll quickly realize that it’s worth every ounce of effort. 

The stress of every day life is enough, without having to worry about the amount of "dust collectors" in your home on top of it.

You never know how much you truly think about these things until they're gone.

You’ll feel light.

You’ll feel free.

And you’ll wonder why you never thought of it sooner!