Downsizing without regret: what to keep, sell and pass on

Every house of a certain age has a box labeled “cords.” Nobody knows what the cords go to. Nobody has known since roughly 1994. That box holds the first lesson in how to downsize your home: start with the stuff you don’t care about, build some momentum, and save the hard decisions for when you’ve had practice making them.

Below is the order, the system and the honest numbers we wish someone had handed us, including what estate sale companies charge and which charities will haul away a sofa.

Start with

Garage, basement, closets

Save for last

Photos and letters

Estate sale cut

Usually 30% to 50%

When to start downsizing

Earlier than you think, and ideally before anything is forcing the issue. A move with a closing date attached turns every decision into an emergency, and emergencies are how good furniture ends up at the curb while junk rides along in the moving truck.

If you can, give yourself a season. A two or three hour session a couple of times a week gets more done than one heroic Saturday that ends with you sitting on the stairs at 4 p.m., reading your high school yearbook.

Get the floor plan of the new place before you decide which furniture comes along, and measure. A sofa that “should fit” is how people end up paying movers to carry something twice.

How to downsize your home, room by room

Margareta Magnusson, the Swedish artist whose book The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning made decluttering sound both morbid and sensible, recommends starting with the basement, the attic and the closets by the front door, and leaving photographs until the end. In short, begin where your feelings are thinnest.

1. Garage, basement and attic. Dried-up paint, duplicate tools, the exercise bike now serving as a coat rack. Low emotion, high volume.
2. Linen closets and bathrooms. Count the towels. Then count the people who will live in the new place.
3. Kitchen. Keep what you used in the past year, plus the one good roasting pan. The fondue set has had its decade.
4. Guest room and home office. Old files go to a shredding event, but set aside tax records and legal papers until you’ve checked what you need to keep.
5. Living and dining rooms. The big furniture calls, made with the new floor plan in hand.
6. Bedroom closets. Personal but replaceable. Be honest about sizes and about the shoes that hurt.
7. Photos, letters and keepsakes. Last, when your decision-making is sharpest and the deadline is no longer breathing on you.

Every easy room you finish is proof you can do this, and the house gets visibly emptier. Three hours on one shoebox of letters offers neither.

Keep, sell, give, donate, toss

Buy five colors of painter’s tape or sticky notes and label as you go. Decide once, then move on to the next thing.

• Keep. Things you use, love and have room for in the new place. All three, not one out of three.
• Sell. Items with real resale value: good tools, newer furniture, mid-century pieces, jewelry, collectibles with an actual market.
• Give. Things a specific person has asked for, by name. A pile for “someone will want this” does not count.
• Donate. Usable goods in decent shape that won’t sell for enough to bother.
• Toss. Broken, stained, expired or unidentifiable. See: the cords.

Your kids probably don’t want the china

This is the part nobody enjoys hearing. In 2017, Next Avenue editor Richard Eisenberg wrote about clearing out his late father’s belongings and finding almost no takers. As he told NBC News, “It came as a sad surprise that even the Goodwill and the Salvation Army wouldn’t pick up most of the stuff.” His article passed a million views within days, which tells you how many people were standing in the same dining room.

The usual rejects, according to that reporting: full sets of china, crystal, silver-plated flatware and what the trade calls “brown furniture,” unless it’s mid-century modern or a verified antique. “There’s an overabundance of used furniture on the market,” Marty Stevens-Heebner, founder of ClearHomeSolutions, told NBC. The Christian Science Monitor found the same pattern, adding Hummel figurines and Thomas Kinkade paintings to the list, and noted the obvious: grown children usually have furnished homes of their own.

None of this means your children don’t love you. It means they live in a two-bedroom condo and eat dinner off their laps. Ask your kids what they want, accept the answer, and don’t store a hutch for ten years waiting for them to change their minds.

Ask your kids what they want, accept the answer, and don’t store a hutch for ten years waiting for them to change their minds.

Where to sell: estate sales, consignment, Marketplace, auction

Each route trades money for effort differently.

Estate sales. A survey by the listing site EstateSales.NET, reported by HomeLight, found the most common commission was 35% to 40%. That stings until you remember the company prices, stages, advertises, staffs and cleans up the sale. Get the contract in writing, ask who removes the leftovers and what that costs, and call references from recent sales.

Consignment. Before you sign, ask for the split, whether prices drop over time, and what happens to pieces that don’t sell.

Marketplace. Photograph items in daylight, price a little above what you’ll accept, and have someone else home when buyers come. Move big pieces to the garage first so nobody needs a house tour.

Auction houses. Send photos before hauling anything in, and ask for the full fee schedule in writing, since charges for photography, insurance or handling vary by house.

Donating: who picks up, and the tax receipt

Charity pickup is a downsizer’s best friend, with fine print. Most Habitat for Humanity ReStores pick up furniture and appliances, though upholstered pieces must be free of tears, stains and pet damage. The Salvation Army schedules free pickups online in many ZIP codes, with every item accepted “at the driver’s discretion.” Call your local store before you count on either.

The IRS rules are specific. Clothing and household items must be in “good used condition or better” to be deductible. Any single gift of $250 or more needs a written acknowledgment from the charity. If your deduction for noncash gifts tops $500, you’ll file Form 8283, and an item or group of similar items valued over $5,000 needs a qualified appraisal. Photograph what you give and keep a list.

Photos and slides: digitize first, decide later

The photo boxes are where downsizing stalls. Split the work into two jobs, preserving and choosing. Digitize first, and you can be braver about the prints afterward.

The Library of Congress’s advice on home scanning is refreshingly practical. Scan at 300 dpi (dots per inch, the scanner’s resolution setting) for snapshots you’d print at 4×6 or 5×7, at 600 dpi or more for anything you’d print at 8×10 or larger, and at the highest setting if preservation is the goal. JPEG files are fine for viewing and sharing; TIFF files are bigger but sturdier for the long haul.

Slides and negatives need a scanner with a film adapter or a dedicated slide scanner, and a few thousand Kodachromes is a lot of evenings. That’s the case for a scanning service; ask how they ship and handle originals.

Keep at least two copies on different kinds of storage, such as a computer plus an external drive or cloud account, stored in separate places. The Library of Congress suggests moving them to current media about every five years. Then send each child a folder of the pictures they’re in. No heirloom you hand out will be more welcome.

Heirlooms and the family conversation

Have the conversation before the sorting starts. Magnusson’s advice is to tell family and friends what you’re up to, because they may help, and they may claim things you’d have given away.

• Ask for wish lists. Have each child name the five things they would genuinely want. Better to find overlaps now.
• Write down the stories. Tape an index card inside the drawer or under the clock: who owned it, where it came from. An object with its story attached is easier to keep, and easier to let go once the story is saved.
• Take turns choosing. For contested pieces, a simple draft order, youngest first and then rotating, keeps things fair and a little funny.
• Photograph what goes. A picture of the piano costs nothing to store.
• Tell your lawyer. If a particular piece should go to a particular person after you die, tell your estate attorney so it’s in writing.

When to call a senior move manager

If the house is large, the timeline is short, or the family lives three time zones away, look at a senior move manager. These professionals handle the whole sequence: a move plan, sorting, a floor plan for the new place, arranging the estate sale, consignment or donations, hiring and supervising movers, and unpacking at the other end.

The trade group is the National Association of Senior and Specialty Move Managers (NASMM). According to its consumer FAQ, members are reviewed for insurance, complete required courses covering ethics, safety and contracts, and provide a written estimate before you pay. Costs vary considerably by region and by services; some managers bill hourly, others quote one price for the job. You can search for a member near you, and ask any candidate for proof of insurance, a written contract and references.

A move manager is also a neutral third party: someone else says “nobody wants the china,” and nobody sulks through Thanksgiving.

Questions readers ask