Your home holds decades of memories, from the family photos lining the walls to the boxes full of old school reports filling the loft. When all of your children have left home for good though, and you find yourself cleaning empty rooms, you might feel like it’s time for a fresh start.
In this article, we’ll give you some practical tips to help you navigate the downsizing process with the minimum of stress. From managing the decluttering and sorting to tips to help you sell your house as quickly as possible, we’ll offer you practical and emotional support and guide you to the next stage of your life positively and productively.
How to know if it’s time to downsize
When you first consider downsizing it might feel like a backward step – we’re encouraged to buy bigger as our families grow and a large home is considered by many to be a status symbol. Moving into somewhere smaller doesn’t have to be a backwards step though when it’s done with intention and there can be a huge number of benefits to downsizing.
Take a read through these and if more than one of them resonates, it could be time to consider a move:
- You’d like to free up capital to enjoy retirement, take more holidays or be able to support younger family members financially
- You want to reduce monthly living costs and are finding that bills and utilities have spiralled
- You feel overwhelmed by the time and effort involved in keeping your large family home clean and well-maintained
- You’re strugglingwith stairs or would like to future-proof your home for future mobility needs
Make the process easy on yourself
Sorting through a family home ready to move can be a very emotional process, so be gentle with yourself and give yourself plenty of time to give it the respect it deserves.
Start small
If you’ve lived in your home for a long time you’ll likely have a lot of possessions and memories to work through so ease yourself in by starting small. Dividing the house into small zones can help with any overwhelm, and the zones really can be as small as you need – start with sorting the cutlery drawer if you need to and build up gradually!
Acknowledge your feelings
It’s very normal that sorting through your things is going to spark a lot of big feelings, so don’t shy away from this. Instead, lean in, take a moment to acknowledge the significance of an item, and then either decide to keep it and treasure it or let go of it.
Allow plenty of time
The temptation when dealing with big events like moving is to put it off until the last minute, but this is the worst thing you can do if you need to downsize as you’ll panic and not be able to throw anything away. Allow yourself alotof time – more than you think you’ll need – and this will help you avoid the stress of feeling up against a deadline.
Involve the family (or not)
How involved other people get is really up to you. If you’d like as much help as possible, rope your adult children in to help you sort through things and take trips to the recycling centre and charity shops. Other people prefer to do it themselves without having to manage family politics at the same time. Whatever feels most comfortable to you is absolutely okay.
Sell your home the low-stress way
If theidea of having to prepare your home for endless viewingsfills you with dread then you’ll be pleased to hear that there are alternative ways to sell your home that allow you to dedicate the time instead tosorting and clearing.
Rather than put your property on the open market, you could use a company thatoffers cash for houses like We Buy Any Home. The process starts with a free cash offer in minutes. Compare your options and the figures and if you decide to go the cash route you get to choose your completion date and could have money in the bank within seven days. Simplifying selling like this frees up the emotional capacity you need to deal with downsizing, meaning you can focus on other aspects of thisbig transition.
Give yourself time and grace to manage the moving process carefully, and your new home can represent a fantastic new stage in your life, with more emotional and financial freedom and the chance to enjoy retirement to its fullest.
