Surviving Downsizing

The reasons for moving are all too clear: your home has become too big for you, it’s too much to maintain, and you’d like to spend more time with children and grandchildren. But you remain rooted in place, daunted by the seeming immensity of breaking free. 

There's Ample Cause for Hesitation
In fact, there’s no way to minimize the size of the task that awaits you. If you own your home, you have to put it on the market; deal with realtors, bankers, buyers, and lawyers; sign scores of documents; and then go through the process all over again when you buy or rent a new home.  You also have to decide what you want to take with you and find a way to dispose of the items you leave behind. And you have to make a seemingly endless series of arrangements, from scheduling movers and packers to opening and closing accounts with utilities, phone companies, and banks. 

And then there are the emotional obstacles. Parting with your possessions—even those you haven’t used in years—can seem like a diminishment of your life, as does leaving a home that for decades you’ve called your own. And when it comes time to part with them, even the most trivial of objects can become incredibly sticky, adhering firmly to your hands with bonds of memory, guilt, and good intentions. You meant to clean that old set of silver you inherited from your great-aunt, but somehow you just never got around to it. If you sell it now, you never will.

Make it a Group Project
In the final analysis, downsizing is not a do-it-yourself task. It’s only natural to need plenty of support, both physical and moral, to get the job done.  But with some assistance, it can be done and done well:

• Break the task down into sections. If you have children, you might ask one of them who lives nearby to take charge of selling your house and ask others to look into the housing alternatives in your new location.
  
  
• Come up with a system that will help you dispose of your belongings. Some you’ll take with you, some you’ll throw out, some you’ll sell, and others you’ll give away.  Have a friend or family member go through your possessions with you. Sometimes all it takes is the opportunity to reminisce about an object to release its grasp.   
  
  
• Call in the professionals. There are businesses that will do everything from organizing a garage sale to helping you decide which furniture you should take with you to your new home. 

No matter what their age, people are surprisingly resilient. Most people who have downsized feel liberated by the experience and have few regrets when they’re done. Once you downsize, you’re free to look forward to the future, rather than feel held back by the past.