Are you living in a house with excess space?

If so, it’s time to downsize your home! By downsizing your home, you’ll be able to save tons of money. Plus, downsizing means you won’t be tempted to fill up excess space with junk you don’t need.

While downsizing comes with some major benefits, it’s important to remember that the downsizing process can be a lot of work.

To make downsizing your home easier, follow these key tips.

1. Make an Inventory of Everything You Own

Just because you don’t have items falling out of your closet or stuffed storage bins, doesn’t mean you still don’t have a lot of unnecessary stuff.

To figure out exactly what you have, we suggest making an inventory of everything you own. By creating a list of everything you own, you’ll be able to get a better grasp of how much of your stuff you actually use as well as what items you have unnecessary multiples of.

2. Label and Categorize Everything

To make sure you don’t get lost in the chaos of downsizing, we suggest categorizing and labeling everything you own. If you choose to get rid of something, make sure to mark it off so you don’t waste time searching for it later on.

By categorizing all of your stuff, you’ll have a better idea of the items you tend to “collect”. Being aware of the items you tend to buy too much of can help prevent cluttering issues in the future.

3. Create Piles

Once you’ve labeled and categorized all of your belongings, it’s time to separate everything into three piles. You should have a pile for the stuff you want to keep, a pile of the stuff you want to donate, and a pile for items that need to be tossed out.

Whenever you find duplicates of something, it’s almost always a good idea to purge at least one of these items. For example, there’s no need for two blenders or two coffee machines.

When going through your items, we suggest taking it one room at a time to prevent yourself from feeling overwhelmed.

4. Abide By the One-Year Rule

When figuring out which items to keep and which items to toss, we suggest that you abide by the one-year rule.

This rule dictates that if you haven’t used an item for a year, you shouldn’t keep it. Chances are, if you haven’t used something in the past year, you won’t be using it in the following year.

The only exception to this rule is with sentimental items. If you’re dealing with estate sales, you may find that there are many sentimental items that your loved one passed onto you that you want to keep. If you don’t have space for all of these items, you can always entrust some of them to close friends and family members.

5. Map Out Your New Space

To figure out exactly how much stuff you need to get rid of and how many new items you can buy, we suggest mapping out your new space ahead of time.

Make a plan for where you’re going to put every single item. And, figure out how you’re going to create additional storage space.

Downsizing Your Home: Are You Ready to Downsize?

Now that you’ve read this guide on downsizing your home, it’s time to get started. Before you know it, you’ll be ready for your smaller space.

Be sure to check back in with our blog for more tips and tricks on moving homes.