Moving Into a Tiny Home: Four Essential Tips to Help You Downsize
Moving to a tiny house is an exciting prospect, but if you arrive at your tiny house with a removals truck full of possessions, you and your stuff simply won't be able to fit into your new home. During the transition, you need to pare down your possessions, but just how do you downsize into a tiny home? Take a look at these tips:
1. Start with needs and realities
Start by identifying what you need and truly use. Make a list of what you do during an average day and week and identify the items you need to make it possible. For example, imagine you start with coffee, open your laptop to work from home, feed your dog, eat lunch and dinner, relax while streaming a show, and finally, take a run at the end of the day. Basically, to keep this rhythm, you need your coffee pot and cup, a laptop and modem, a dog food bowl, basic cooking supplies and your running gear. On the other hand, you don't need that extra ice cream maker, a closet full of dog toys and your stationary bicycle.
2. Pare down
One you have figured out which items you truly need to move into your tiny home, you need to figure out how to pare down the rest of your possessions and also flag a few extras and sentimentals to move into the tiny house. To get guidance on downsizing, you can hire a consultant or turn to a book. Currently, the book of choice for minimalists and people trying to avoid clutter is Marie Kondo's "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up". At its heart, this book instructs you to hold everything you own, determine if it gives you joy and get rid of it if it doesn't.
3. Have a full-house sale
If you live in a full-size house, you may need to get rid of the majority of your possessions before moving into a tiny home. Once you've identified what you don't need, consider holding a full-house sale. Simply list the sale online and in local papers, but rather than hauling everything out to your garage or driveway, leave everything where it is, pop prices on your items, and open up your home to buyers. You may want to work with an estate sale organiser as you are essentially holding the equivalent of an estate sale.
4. Put stuff into storage and sell slowly
Alternatively, if you want to try to garner higher prices on your stuff, you may want to sell it slowly. For example, if you sell a painting on a specialist website that advertises to art collectors, you're likely to get a higher price than you would selling the same painting at an estate sale full of regular buyers.
To that end, consider taking pictures of all your items so you can sell them online. Then, hire removalists to move your stuff into storage or into a shipping container next to your tiny home. Finally, sell your stuff slowly as you live in the tiny home.