If you’re thinking it’s time to downsize, there may be many questions you have about how to make the process as smooth as possible. Homeowners often downsize for a variety of reasons, with one of the most common being their children having moved out on their own. Realizing you have a couple of unused bedrooms and more space than you need can be good motivation for homeowners to start searching for smaller homes. Whatever your reason in for the downsizing, here are a few tips to help streamline the process:

Start Before You Buy

Downsizing isn’t just about moving into a smaller home. For most of us, it also means downsizing our possessions. Waiting to do this until you arrive in your new space can set you up for a highly stressful move in. You don’t want to feel like you’re filling your new home to the brim. Instead, invest some time early on in your home search so that by the time you find the right home, you’re ready to start packing.

Consider Your Furniture

If you’re looking for a significantly smaller space, it’s also important to think about if your current furniture will work in a new space. Many homeowners find that some of their furniture is too large or bulky to work in a smaller space. Going for clean lines and simple shapes can help you select the furniture pieces that will complement a smaller space.

Pinpoint Your Challenges

When it comes to downsizing, most of us will run into a few challenges. If you can try to pinpoint these ahead of time, you can often save yourself a lot of headaches. Perhaps it’s family heirlooms or sentimental items from when your children were young. What are those areas of belongings that are too big to take with you, but challenging to let go of? I’m not suggesting you have to take up minimalism in order to downsize, but considering how you’ll navigate these areas in advance can prevent emotions from getting the better of us.

Use Digital Tools

Thinking about those challenges in advance also gives us the opportunity to develop solutions that work. A great example of this is a homeowner with a large collection of family photos. While some of these photos you may keep hard copies of, others you may be comfortable with only digital copies. By embracing technology’s power to save thousands of photos without taking up any physical space in our homes, we can hold on to some sentimental things without having to transport them to and store them in our new, smaller space.

Have you downsized or is it something you’ve thought about? What would motivate you to want to downsize? And what do you think your biggest challenges would be? I’d love to hear your thoughts!