Downsizing!

[burntoutmum]

Hi

We're in the process of trying to sell our house to move to a nearby city. The Down side is the fact that we can't afford the equivalent of our current house so will lose a bedroom and probably bathroom/ en suite. The extra bedroom is a spare so no one will have to share.

There are lots of up sides to moving but we're really struggling to get our heads around the idea of a smaller house

Please tell me positive stories!!! Where will all our junk stuff go?! Will we just get used to it? Or are we mad....

We're doing similar. We've sold our 4bed/3 bathroom and getting a 3 bedroom in a city. Lots of reasons to move there including better schools, family, connections, etc. We are halving our mortgage to give us more options re working/childcare. Currently we're in rented so have decluttered a lot but will need a second go at it. You just accumulate so much stuff as a family- toys, books, papers, camping stuff etc.

I've actually found it liberating to just look at stuff and say "I don't have the luxury of keeping this any more" and I don't need to still have every towel I've ever owned, or wedding gifts never used, or tatty furniture that won't fit in the new place, or enough DIY stuff to open a shop or a massive craft stash. All the "just in case" stuff is going.

I'm looking forward to having less stuff to clean, store, lose things in and be such an obligation. The previous house really I needed a cleaner to keep on top of it. The new one is fresh, light and cheerful and a perfectly good 1950s family house like many of our parents generation grew up in.

Our mitigations are - first job will be to get the loft totally boarded out with a decent ladder and shelving. There is a garage and a conservatory. Also we are getting a wooden garden office put in for a bolt-hole/guest hut/home office. I think we will put in a downstairs loo but we are resolutely resisting an extension.

Every inch of space will have to work hard and have good storage. But I am looking forward to it. Life is about people, not stuff. In the end, if it's a failure we can just move to a larger house in a slightly less desirable part of the city.

I am about to embark on a similar mission. I am sorting through cupboards now with a thought of ' have I used you in the last year /2years/3years?
I also ( more like notme than the op) am focussing on positives: less cleaning, more money to spend on holidays and meals out etc.
I am more worried about getting rid of furniture nearer the time, eBay doesn't seem to go above 99p for me most of the time...

Wish it would give us extra money! Even downsizing is going to increase our mortgage , however we will save on school bus fares for DS. Ultimately I'm hoping for a better life for us all though.

I'm enjoying the decluttering, it's pretty liberating!

jazzmin - do you want money for the furniture? If not do you have a charity nearby who pick up furniture?

You just get ruthless, we upsized but went via cramped rental.

Honestly I love it - made so many tough decisions about what few things to keep but 3 years later no regrets, not missed a single thing. DC have a small memory box each.

We moved from a 3,000 square foot house in the US a few years ago, to a rented house in the UK of about (guessing a bit here) 1500 square feet. Much decluttering, yard sales, and charity donations later it still cost us 12 grand to ship our belongings here!

Fast forward to now, we're in the process of buying a 1200 square foot house. The rooms are actually the same size as the rooms in our rental home, but the rental is an older property with two huge airing cupboards, enormous build in wardrobes, a massive loft etc, whereas the house we're buying is a newer property which has used space very efficiently and doesn't have a loft (dormer bedrooms). But, after looking at lots of other much bigger and more expensive properties, I realised all i could see was huge utility bills, no disposable income once we'd paid the mortgage, and then in about 7 years our kids would leave home (or go to college) and we'd want to downsize again.

The mortgage on the house we're buying is less than our rent so we'll have money to go out for tea or weekends away, and won't have to go into panic mode if one of us is laid off work. We're thinking this house still won't be ridiculously huge for 2 people once the kids go, so it might even turn into our forever home.

So, I'm decluttering again - figure I need to lose about 25% of our belongings. Someone else has already said it here - it feels lovely to get rid of boxes of things (some of which we've never even unpacked from our move from the states years ago so we clearly didn't need whatever-it-is) and to know we're only going to move the things we actually need and like. We'll still keep the kids' keepsakes but other than that, if it hasn't been used in the last 18 months, it's off to a charity shop...