retirement

Are you ready to take a BIG step toward following your dreams? For those of us wanting to get off the rat-race rollercoaster, there’s one very big, very powerful way to get well on the path to your future and freedom. I’m talking about downsizing. Let’s talk about the Pros and Cons to Downsizing Your Home.

If you’re ready to get on with the next phase of your life and start living your dreams, downsizing your home can be a great way to start. We’ve done two major downsizes over the last four years. Downsize #1 was 5,000 square feet down to 3,000. Then as more of our kids grew up and moved on, we were able to do it again – 3,000 sq. ft. down to 1,700. That’s a lot of downsizing! (No, those pictures aren’t our actual houses…lol! Just for illustration purposes!)

My hubby and I definitely made sure we were on the same page about all of the downsizing craziness by writing down separately – and then together – our lists of pros and cons. We talked about it, compared notes, and came up with our list of the Top 10 Pros and Cons to Downsizing Your Home. Here’s our list!

Pros and Cons to Downsizing Your Home

Downsizing Pros:

1. Cost – You will likely save money when downsizing your home. Smaller house usually means smaller house payment. Yay! This will free up some cash in order to get on your path to freedom and live your dreams your way!
2. Less Maintenance – Likewise, moving to a smaller place usually means there’s less house maintenance. Smaller yard. Less square footage. Fewer rooms. All of that means less maintenance, which will save you money and time.
3. Sell Your Stuff – Decluttering is not only emotionally liberating, it is also financially liberating. You probably have many items in your home that you don’t want or don’t use anymore, but someone else would love to get their hands on it. And they’ll pay you for it! List your things on Craigslist or the Facebook Market place and you can clean out your clutter and make some cash to put toward your new lifestyle!
4. Better Amenities – This unexpected Pro and been awesome! We downsized to a condominium that has tons of amenities… pools, hot tubs, a gym, and a concierge to get our packages when we’re out of town. We don’t have to maintain any of it and it’s still cheaper than when we were in the big house! A great bonus for sure.
5. Frees Up Time – All of the above Pros to downsizing your home can be summed up by our #5 Pro. We simply have more time to follow our dreams of more travel and working from home because we have less cost, lower maintenance, less stuff, and more thing to enjoy in our environment. Yes, more time together and more time to pursue our passions. That’s what downsizing your home is all about!

Downsizing Cons:

Well a list of Pros and Cons to downsizing your home wouldn’t be complete without the cons, right? So let’s get to it!

1. No Room For Family to Stay – It’s true. Downsizing your home usually means fewer bedrooms, which means little or no room for visiting family and friends. (But is that really a con??? I’ll let you decide that for yourself!)
2. No Garage – This was a big one for my hubby. He LOVED our garage – the tools, the extra space, the place to securely tuck away our cars (which we had to downsize eventually too). Moving into a condo meant no garage for us. It was a tough sell for my hubby, but in the end (we’re now 2 years into it), he actually doesn’t miss the garage at all! It’s been a blessing in disguise.
3. Sell Your Stuff – Yes, I’m well aware that I also have this on the Pro list. While it’s great to get rid of a lot of extraneous stuff, it can also be difficult to condense and eliminate a lot of the personal/emotional items. One thing we found very helpful was to buy a large hard drive and scan and store our photos and old DVDs, CDs (VHS tapes?), and other items that can be digitally stored. We can now access all of those items anytime we want or need. We use this hard drive. And we also use this awesome digital picture frame and actually see our favorite family photos far more often than we used to. It’s been a great addition to our home.
4. Need to be Organized – Yep! Smaller space means less room to pile stuff up. So it’s pretty critical to be organized when moving into a tiny home or smaller house. I actually think this is great, but it certainly does require some effort. Moving into a much smaller closet was a bit of a challenge (and I don’t even have very many clothes!), but we’ve got our closet very well-organized so it works for us! Now every time a new shirt or pair of shoes comes in, one goes out! Here’s a great book on organization.
5. Must Really Like Spouse or Partner – This one kind of goes without saying…. If you’re going to be living in a much smaller area, you’re going to be seeing each other, tripping over each other, and kind of being in each other’s way on occasion. There’s really no far-away separate space to run to if you need “private time.” So it’s important to respect each other’s space and feelings and simply get along. So you might want to make sure you can do that before you choose to move into a small space! Hopefully, this won’t be a problem for you… 😉

Getting on your path to living your life, your dreams, your way is exciting, challenging, and nerve-wracking all at the same time! But I’m here to help! This article on “success” might also be helpful.

Check out the Pros and Cons to Downsizing Your Home Video

This is our list of the Pros and Cons of Downsizing Your Home and I hope it helps you take that next big step in fulfilling your dreams. Your list might be different, but just sit down and take the time to write it out. You might be surprised at how obvious the decision becomes when you see it in black and white.

We’ve done it and are happy to share the process with you. Please feel free to reach out to me at Heather@TheFreedomStrategy.com to ask me any questions. I’m happy to help!