Once we decided to make the move to the garage, we began casually downsizing. Minimalists call this the first wave- getting rid of the obvious things that you no longer need or want. If someone mentioned something they were looking for that I had, I sold it. We participated in our community garage sale. We took most of our books to the second-hand bookstore to sell and began distributing other things to family and friends. Carloads of things went to Goodwill. There were entire rooms in the house that became empty and went unused. Perhaps we became a bit cocky.
We decided to downsize to an apartment during the design and renovation. We weren't ready to list our suburban home (we were only there 11 months!), so we found some great tenants. They surprised us with an offer we couldn't refuse to vacate the house in just 6 days. When deciding on their offer, we looked around the house and, while we hadn't packed a single box, we thought that we were doing so well on our downsizing efforts that it shouldn't be a problem getting out in time. Anyone who's ever moved knows what naive thinking that was. I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that as the tenants were moving in the front, we were moving the final things out the back. It was wild.
Looking back at that whirlwind of a week, we picked up a few tips on downsizing.
1. Downsizing is best done in small chunks. It was easy and we were able to get top dollar for our things when we were moving slowly. Also, it was easier emotionally to say goodbye to things when we had some time to do so. It also frees up the space for you to emotionally detach from the next round of 'stuff.' It was really difficult emotionally to have to get rid of so much stuff at once.
2. Get some support. The easiest/cheapest thing to do would be to have a friend come over, open a bottle of wine and make an event of going through something. For example, I had a closet full of clothes that ranged from pre pregnancy clothes to my current size. I desperately needed help and an objective eye to help me purge my closet. I actually hired a stylist that week to help me weed through my clothing. I got rid of 8 garbage bags worth of clothing in 3 hours. It was exhausting and my wardrobe is much smaller than the typical woman's, but I love going to my closet now because everything I have fits. It also encourages more creativity.
3. Sometimes donation hurts, but it's worth it. The 8 garbage bags of clothes sat in my car for two days because Goodwill was closed on Thanksgiving. I thought about all the new JCrew dresses and other brand name clothing sitting out there begging to be rescued and sold on eBay. It was so difficult resisting and I made my husband take the donation first thing on Friday morning. In retrospect, I know that I could have made some money and may have played with it if I had time, but I'm so glad that I'm able to move on and have one less thing to worry about. It actually makes me feel better when I think about how excited someone is going to get when they see my clothes on a Goodwill rack for a great price.
4. Pick a threshold amount for donation vs. selling. What I mean by that is that selling your stuff can help you earn back some of your money, but it can also be a hassle. We tried to sell things throughout the week we were packing and it was so difficult. Managing the lists of people replying, answering questions, taking additional pictures, setting up pickups and meetups took up a lot of time. Don't even get me started on the frustration of people flaking out. Some people won't bother selling things worth less than $25, other people won't sell things less than $10. Choose your amount and then donate the rest. It will save you a lot of hassle. Remember, your time is worth something, too.
5. Categorize your things when you list them. It's much easier to sell multiple things to a single person if you list them all in one ad. Once we stopped our frantic dash and actually took some time with our ads, we had more success. One woman bought $120 worth of baby toys/equipment. Sales like that will make your life much easier.
These were just a few things we've been learning along the way, but definitely hit home during the week that we moved. While we were able to get out and successfully moved to an apartment, we still have a lot of stuff we need to get rid of. What tips do you have for us?
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