I once told my friends and family that I loved Tangled. After that, allllllll my gifts were those kitschy Tangled-themed items: coloring books, small figurines, small dish rags, knitted keychains, stickers. I, to be clear, am not seven nor do I have a seven-year-old interested in Tangled, so most of this just went into a closet.
In fairness to my family, this is a genetic trait, it would seem, because I spent two years buying everything under the sun that was Donald Duck themed (cake trays, aprons, toys, coloring books) because my dad said he loved Donald Duck.
If you have an upcoming move, you might be surprised at just how much stuff you are taking with you that you don’t need. Whether you are trying to cut your weight to save money or you need everything to fit into a U-Haul, here are my tips for decluttering/downsizing for a move.
Tip #1: Use a Moving Calculator
At the risk of sounding like an elderly narrator adjusting his pince-nez while ruminating on how things were “back in my day,” back in my day of early moves, moving calculators didn’t exist. I learned from my military grandmother how to do it myself.
So every move was a painstaking Excel spreadsheet of what all I owned and how big things were.
Nowadays, we have it much easier. Moving calculators like MoveBuddha let you type in the size of your home with the number of rooms, and BAM! You have the list of boxes you need.
Why bother?
Because you likely don’t realize just how much stuff you have, moving calculators can give you a clear idea of why you might need to downsize.
You can also plug in your location and destination to see just how much it will cost to move said boxes. If you play around with the numbers, you’ll see how much you can save by making cuts.
So start by taking stock of what you have and use a moving calculator.
Tip #2: Deep Clean
You can declutter/downsize for a move by deep cleaning. Remember that box calculator? If you need to bring your total amount or number of boxes down by a significant factor, never underestimate the power of deep cleaning.
This should be done one room at a time, getting rid of anything:
- You don’t need
- You don’t want
- You held on to because it was a gift and that person *might* one day ask about that gift
- You have duplicates of unnecessarily
- You haven’t thought about it in over a year
- You grew out of (trust me, those cool jeans from college will never fit again)
- You upgraded with a better/bigger model (don’t keep the old dishware when you have a new set)
These things can be donated or thrown out.
Note: Every year I do a deep clean where I go through my closet, my kitchen, and my garage. If I haven’t touched something or even thought about it in the last year and it isn’t something seasonal like a set of skis or an inflatable kayak, it gets tossed. The things I actually need and use are things I will have thought about or touched sometime in the last year.
Set aside at least one day every weekend or every week leading up to your move, depending on your work schedule, to make a donation or a dump run. The day you clean and sort is the same day you drop things at the dump or the donation location.
I didn’t think I had a lot of extra stuff to toss out during my last move, but I had a full car load of stuff every weekend for at least 5 weekends, and I still had a car load to donate come moving day.
Tip #3: Start Early
Decluttering/downgrading your goods is just as exhausting as packing and moving. It will take a lot of time and emotional effort.
So start early.
If you try to do it while you are packing for a move, you’ll be in the middle of a lot of frustration and overwhelm, and probably find yourself stuck with analysis paralysis.
If you do it before you get close to that moving date, it’ll be a much more relaxing process, and it will make the moving day a lot more relaxing because you won’t have as much to deal with.
Tip #4: Digitize and Consolidate
Save room by digitizing and consolidating.
My sister-in-law has an entire wall of family photos. Like, the old-fashioned family history style photos. She is immensely proud of her wall. She also has allllllll the old photos of her kids when they were in school.
It was cute when the kids were young, but now it is, I cannot stress this enough, the ENTIRE. WALL. Her hallway is one continuous block of photos, smooshed side by side, floor to ceiling. It looks like a hoarder vomited down her hallway.
I finally convinced her to consolidate by a) making digital scans of each photo in case they get damaged (she only agreed after one of them fell in the fish tank below) and b) putting them in photo albums.
Turns out, she looks at them more (and more mindfully) now that they are in albums instead of down the random hallway to the guest bathroom no one ever uses.
I did something similar with my DVDs. I have a DVD collection from old and I wanted to save them, but after filling three boxes and not even coming close to making a dent, I opted to consolidate.
For this, I bought those DVD cases with all the sleeves. I took out the DVDs and their jackets, placed the jackets behind them in each sleeve, and tossed the plastic containers. This meant a single box of DVD cases instead of half a truckload of boxes.
Tip #5: Keep Things Clean
As you work your way through your home, taking loads to the dump or to donations, try to find new homes for things. Then sit with that new design for a while.
These types of changes can be overwhelming, which is why it’s important to work with one room at a time so you can move methodically through your home and perhaps even come back around and do a second run through.
For example, after you declutter some of your kitchen cabinets–donating the second set of dishware you bought once upon a time when you were hosting a big party but haven’t used since–try to clear your counters so that everything has a new home in your recently decluttered cabinets.
But don’t just fill your cabinets with other things unnecessarily.
Tip #6: Stay Motivated
This is a hard process, so remember the “why” and write it on a piece of paper, or save it as a temporary phone background.
Whenever things get overwhelming (or you are just hungry), look at your motivation to stay on point.
This is especially true if you are following Tip #6 or Tip #7 (see below).
Tip #7: Take Breaks and Reward Yourself
A big reason why it’s important to start early so that you actually have time for breaks. Just like with CBT or any other goal setting, you’re going to have a lot of milestones, like each room or each visit to the Salvation Army/dump, and you should reward yourself.
By creating your milestones or goals (i.e., going to the dump once per week or cleaning out one room per week), you will be in a position to better acknowledge the progress you have made.
Psychologically, this will help keep your motivation high and make it easier to contend with the somewhat overwhelming emotions that come especially from letting go of things that might hold some sentiment (like those aforementioned jeans from college that you *swore* you would be small enough to wear again *soon*).
When you reward yourself, do so by opting for something relaxing, a walk, a float, watching your favorite TV show, or going out to eat at your favorite restaurant. Just make sure you don’t buy something as your reward. It will just be one more thing you have to pack and move!
Tip #8: Upgrade When You Arrive
If you’ve had the same towels and bedding for years, and it isn’t good quality anymore (you know, the towels that rip in the center when you pull them over your back/shoulders to dry off), it might be worth tossing them out and buying new ones at your new home.
A lot of things that we keep may be near their “best-by” date, and we are reluctant to toss them because we still use them.
Well, when moving day comes and you need to downsize, things like that rusted-out metal fire pit can be tossed, and you can buy a new one as a reward for saving money on your move.
Tip #9: Don’t Rethink or Reconsider
Once you have decided to donate a bookshelf or toss out some old books, don’t rethink it or reconsider it.
When things are in a donation pile or in a trash pile, that’s where they live from now on. If you keep going back and looking at it, it will defeat the process.
That’s why it’s important to set aside enough time and to start early with your deep clean process, because it will give you time to go through a room, set things into the donation or dump piles, respectively, and then load everything up on the same day, where possible, so that it’s no longer sitting in your home.
Tip #10: Consider Selling
If you need to downsize and you already have a lot of used or hand-me-down furniture, or even cheaper Ikea furniture, consider selling it on Nextdoor or Facebook Marketplace, and then buying new furniture when you get where you are going.
A lot of cheaply made furniture, things made of pressboard instead of solid wood or cheaper plastic, will break, chip, or otherwise be damaged during a move. Most of the time, you can sell those things online before you move, pocket the money, and put that money toward new furniture when you get where you are going.
I sold an elliptical that we had purchased to someone in our community for roughly the same price as what I paid originally, then I used that money to buy a used one when I arrived. I sold my piano to a new family that couldn’t afford one but wanted their kids to take lessons. That saved me the cost of moving a piano. Did the same thing with the old kitchen table, couches, and one of the spare beds.
Summing Up
There are a lot of ways that you can declutter or downsize your home, starting by using a moving calculator to figure out approximately how much you have and, by extension, how much you need to downsize. From there, start with a deep clean of your home and start early.
Look for ways to digitize or consolidate the things that you own. Stay motivated by taking breaks, remembering why you are doing all this in the first place, and rewarding yourself for reaching your milestones.
Upgrade/replace outdated, worn, or otherwise tattered things when you get where you are going and worst case, sell a lot of the things you have here and use that money to buy replacements when you get where you are going.
I can’t say that these tips will make your move completely painless, but they should at least help relieve some of the headaches. You got this.