Thread--downsizing and house selling

We didn't downsize the house when we built a new one two years ago, but we downsized stuff. The new house is mostly finished space with relatively little unfinished storage space. We spent a year moving and very little went to the new house that didn't have a place and a purpose. It's amazing how much crap you can accumulate in just a few years. I was also amazed how good it felt to lose the extra crap.

My step father is going to be the subject of an episode of "hoarders" some day. Due to this, I think I have a very strong adverse reaction to extra crap. When I hear phrases like, "Take it to the basement/attic" what I hear is, "I have an unhealthy attachment to this worthless crap, and I want it to be a burden upon you when I die."
 
We've never lived in a house bigger than 2000 sq. ft. so we'll likely never have to downsize. We decided early on that we didn't want to pay for or maintain any more than we needed. Hearing all of the stories I have from relatives and friends about their difficulty with this (and the amount of stuff they've collected) I'm very happy with our decision. Not that I wouldn't want my shop to be 5000+ sq. ft...but that's a whole different subject.
 
Well, here's another approach to dealing with an underutilized house -

We've recently moved my 60 year old SIL in with us, as she has some special needs that necessitate having someone lightly watch over her care, and heavily watch over her finances. Once my DH's mother passed away, her care came to us, and initially we elected to move her closer and pay rent, with her being able to afford paying for everything else. We had the rent payments built into our financial plan, but increasingly they felt like a big waste of our money, particularly after we started leaving the house and traveling for months at a time, so we bit the bullet and moved her into our underutilized 2,400 sq ft home instead.

To my relief, it's worked out great, and now our 2,400 sq ft home feels just the right size, rather than a bit too large. Every room is now being used, save for one half bath, which is our just-for-company bathroom.

The boost to our portfolio's projected longevity has been significant. The boost for us has been significant as well, in that our home is no longer vacant and underutilized when we travel. As a result, downsizing is no longer on the drawing board, though relocation for the sake of living somewhere different is always available, should we ever wish to act on it.
 
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Before paying someone to haul stuff off, contact loacl churches to see if they want some yard sale goods. We did that after we held our own yard sale and one local church came and hauled away six SUV loads of stuff we would have had to pay to dispose of.
 
Very inspirational thread. We are in the process of buying our retirement condo right now. It is 5-7 yrs before we think we can pull the trigger. We will be going from 1700sf + large shed + greenhouse to 1100sf. We put our boat up for sale and all that stuff is also here.

The downsizing is to begin. The condo comes furnished so the list of what will go with us will be very short. My DH is a "you never know when you will need it" kind of a guy. We both need to learn how to live a minimalists. I stopped buying "things" about a year ago. That alone feels good. Our plan will motivate up.

DH has only seen the condo in pictures. I have done the traveling. He is talking about things he want to bring. All I can say is "honey wait until you see it. It is smaller than you think".

So we are in wave one. I have enjoyed reading everyone's approaches. The best is how satisfied everyone is. Yes we can do it!!
 
I havent been able to talk DW into downsizing yet. We have a 3800 sf home with a detached workshop on 5 acres. Also have a 1350 sf vacation condo. The condo is a perfect size for us. So I'm keeping my eyes open for smaller house to downsize the house to, while decluttering everywhere and getting the house ready to sell by putting in new flooring, paint, appliances. Could take 10 years to pull this off. My plan includes a workshop at the new place.
 
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Currently in a 4 BR, 3 BA, 2650 sf home. Plan is to eventually downsize back to a house like our starter home...3 BR, 2 BA, about 1600 sf. Shouldn't need anything major at the time of sale as we keep it up as we go and always have the end-game in mind.
 
Very inspirational thread. I hope it continues.

I find it hard to let go of things that hold memories. Everyone says "take a picture of it." That doesn't seem to fix my issue. I find it hard to let go of things that I enjoy and that I think I might need. Yes, we are "overstuffed" with stuff.

But, we are determined to do this thing.

Last night I got four boxes of books ready to go out the door.

.000001 down. .999999 to go.

Kindest regards.
 
We downsized in 1990, in a manner of speaking. Megacorp sent us to NY for a two year assignment, so we brought all our stuff with us (it wasn't much). We arrived intact, the stuff arrived totally destroyed. Replaceable stuff, such as clothing, and also the other stuff, like photos, documents & paper records, all the memorabilia we had accumulated in our 15 years together. It was a very quick lessen in how to let go of stuff, and since then, getting rid of things when we move has been easy.
 
MichaelB said:
We downsized in 1990, in a manner of speaking. Megacorp sent us to NY for a two year assignment, so we brought all our stuff with us (it wasn't much). We arrived intact, the stuff arrived totally destroyed. Replaceable stuff, such as clothing, and also the other stuff, like photos, documents & paper records, all the memorabilia we had accumulated in our 15 years together. It was a very quick lessen in how to let go of stuff, and since then, getting rid of things when we move has been easy.
Click to expand...

Oof! That is rough. I have had bad moves where all the furniture was gouged and destroyed, but never lost photos and documents. Once my ex and I were robbed of 80% of our stuff the day after the moving company delivered it. Most of our stuff they took was still in boxes so we had no idea exactly what was taken. For months were were saying things like, "where's the calculator? Oh darn, they must have got that too".
 
We recently reduced our house size by 40% and are very much enjoying a simpler, easier to maintain and less costly life style. My only regret is that we waited to purge 20+ years of accumulated belongings until just before we moved. Probably could have sold off more stuff, but didn't have the time, so much of it was donated. Even the donations were a challenge, as we ran into trouble scheduling some of the charities to come pick up furniture before we had to vacate.
 
We have downsized several times but we just completed moving all our personal stuff into the den of our penthouse for lock off and rented it as a 2BR/2 bath furnished place. Very cathartic process. The maid, relatives and good will got the benefit of our surplus.

We are in México for 7 months and will do some stuff elimination here too.
 
I have a recent thread on this http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f28/downsizing-66201.html

We went from 2900 sf to 1500 sf. We went room by room and made four piles - donate, sell, trash, take. We ended up donating the sell stuff and the amount of trash was frightening ! When I think of how much money I spent on stuff that was utlimately trashed it makes me nauseous.

BUT ... I have plenty of unused space in the 1500 sq ft house ! I have empty kitchen cabinets, two empty kitchen drawers and an empty linen closet (there are two in the house). Its amazing how much stuff you only think you need. We've been in the new house three months and I haven't missed a thing.
 
We dropped one of our hobby clubs because we realized some of the people had serious hoarding issues. Their houses were packed with hobby stuff room to room. One person told us he could never move because of all the stuff. We didn't want to end up like that. Yet they kept on collecting and acquiring more stuff because that was their hobby. I guess it would be different if they were dealers and sold things regularly instead of just having them pile up.

A family came up to us at a show one time asking for help getting rid of a collection they inherited. We realized then we didn't want to put our kids through that. So we sold our collection, dropped out of the club and save money each year now by not collecting things any more.

I watch the show Clean Sweep on Netflix sometimes for inspiration on getting rid of stuff. They have a team go in and sell the clutter and memorabilia at a garage sale and then renovate some rooms with resources provided by the show provides plus the money they made from the garage sale. It is more inspiring than hoarders because the people are more just messy or shopping addicts than seriously mentally ill.

I also really like watching House Hunters International. As the kids get launched and we downsize to a lock and go place, we intend to slow travel to some of the places that look the coolest on the show, and maybe eventually retire in one of them. A lot of those people just move from one exotic and interesting country to the next into furnished apartments with very little of their own stuff. That is more a model for retirement for us than keeping a big house that is costly and time consuming to maintain and accumulating more depreciating consumer goods.

We live in an expensive area so downsizing 1,000 sq feet will fund many years of travel, not to mention the time and dollar savings each year on home maintenance, cleaning, yard work, utility bills, home furnishing, etc.
 
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I failed to mention that I moved out of the big house before we put in on the market. It was stressful doing so, but there was too much clutter and I found the small house before I could clear the place out and take care of some deferred maintenance. I had an 8 week lag between move out and home listing. Thankfully the house sold for full asking price in 9 days !
 
We are going from 3000 sf to probably 1500 or slightly less. Right now we are on three levels and the stairs are tough! Looking forwarding to first floor living. I'm thinking of packing everything away that I want to take and putting it into a "pod" to be stored and later shipped once we move.

Then, I can leave whatever furniture, collectibles, housewares, etc. in the home for an "estate sale". Once the house is cleared out, we can recarpet and paint and put on the market.

Does that sound sensible to you experts?

Deb
 
There is a lot of money tied up in pods. They even have reality shows for the people who buy them.
 
As a minimalist, anti-clutter person from way back, I won't have much to get rid of when I "downsize." Not really downsizing, as will be moving to a same size condo in a *much* less expensive, much less trendy locale. Massive equity in the place will allow me to suck money out of it like a straw and throw it all into my portfolio. Before selling will do some cosmetic remodeling (bath, kitchen, carpet, paint) so the trendies will throw as many of their trendy dollars my way as I can get.
 
We got a place in the mountains but never really considered retiring there. One day we figured out if we sold the big city house and moved down here we wouldn't have to work again. On our weekend trips we starting taking stuff we knew we wanted to keep.

Craigslist. Took LOTS of pictures and posted everything at once. Dedicate a day or two to responding to inquiries and a bunch of it will sell.

Kids. Or friends ... stuff that is probably worth a little but what the hell offer it around and some of it will go that way.

Donate. We made many many trips to the donation center and after the first item was dropped off it became more and more liberating.

We tried to avoid moving s**t and then getting rid of it and were pretty much
successful :)

At some point you just gotta let go and then it becomes fun.
 
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