Need to Downsize? Smooth Transitions Owner Ann Newberry Provides Tips

If you’ve reached a point where the house is too big for you—you’re using fi ve rooms and heating 17—or you've had a change in life situation or a change in your mobility situation, or you want to move to a different location … all those are reasons to downsize.

Start early, end happy. What that means is, the more time you give yourself to make decisions, the less stressed and the less traumatic the change is going to be, because you can slowly ease emotionally into the fact that you’re saying goodbye to a lot of your possessions.

I tell people, it’s like eating an elephant. You have to do it one bite at a time, because otherwise it's just too enormous a task to think about. Pick an area in your house that you don’t use very often because that's going to have the most things you don’t need. Set a timer for about an hour and a half. Once you walk into that room and start the timer, do not leave the room. ... No phone calls, no nothing. If you spend an hour and a half of focused time going through things, you’ll be surprised at how much you get done.

After two to four hours, depending on your stamina and emotional ability, you get to the point where you’re unwilling to make any more decisions. You need to stop and give your emotions recovery time. I equate downsizing to going to the gym. You can’t do the same exercises every day. You just wear out emotionally. You need that recovery day. And so, with the process of downsizing, ideally plan a couple hours every other day.

Smooth Transitions Owner Ann Newberry ’79 is an expert in problem-solving, logistics and project management.