Many retirement and can point residents toward and specialists. Younger people who want to to save money can count on real estate businesses to help.
If you prefer to sort out your own belongings, do some research first. Some blogs and websites offer on editing your belongings, and how to after you move.
When interviewing moving or downsizing specialists, ask these questions:
• Do you use subcontractors or staffers who are direct employees?
• How are your employees screened?
• What is your pick-up and delivery timetable? (Specific times are preferable to a window spanning hours or days.)
• Who will be the contact staffer tasked with monitoring the move from start to finish?
Some helpful tips from the pros:
• Begin in the room you use least. School yourself to stay with that room, instead of allowing yourself to be distracted by sorting out another room.
• Tell your adult children and friends that you’re downsizing. Someone moving into student housing or their first home might be interested in your discards.
• If certain items have special meaning in your family but you can’t bring them to your new home, photograph each one, and e-mail or give a copy of the photographs to your children, with three check boxes: Must Have! Would Like. Pass. Tell the children to fill out the boxes judiciously, because they’ll be the new owners.
• If a room is too overwhelming, assign yourself to sort through one chest of drawers, or one closet, and then quit for the day.
• Keep a camera or smartphone handy as you sort. Take photographs of clothing or objects that evoke fond memories. Then put the objects in the discard pile. It also helps to have a friend or relative willing to help with the sorting process. Telling the story of the memory associated with the object can be help you let it go.
• Remind yourself of moving costs. You’ll save money by moving less, and your new residence will look spacious and inviting, not like a crowded secondhand store.
• As you sort through your closet, reverse the hangers of the clothing you’re ready to discard, or which you haven’t worn in more than a year. After a week, collect the reversed hangers and discard that clothing.
• Measure your new closets. Compare that measurement to your current closet. Try to eliminate enough clothing to leave some breathing room in the new closet.
• Edit your linens: In your new, compact residence, you don’t need as many towels and sheets.
• Easy tosses and donations: Old magazines, books, lawn and gardening supplies, canned goods, spices, clippings, cleaning supplies, old bills and receipts.
• Shred all papers except your most (including financial plan, estate plan, medical and insurance records, personal information).
— Claire Martin
