IN THIS POST
– Reduce your personal belongings
– What to keep, sell and give away
– Find smart storage solutions
– Invest in compact furnishing
– Tips to decorate a small space
Downsizing to an apartment from a house can be a big adjustment – especially if you are used to dwelling in a larger space. However, transitioning to a smaller home is not something to stress over. If you plan ahead, moving from a larger place into a smaller one can actually be rather easy and hassle-free.
There can be a lot of reasons behind downsizing from a house to an apartment. Though whether you are moving for financial reasons or because your house feels too big for your family, you can use this opportunity to get rid of the unwanted possessions that have been laying forgotten deep inside your cupboards, garage or basement. Some of the other benefits of downsizing to an apartment include less maintenance, lower monthly bills, meeting new people and no yard work.
In case you find the prospect of moving and downsizing to be a little overwhelming, all you need to do is take a deep breath and take an inventory of all the items in your house. Also, make sure to measure everything in your new apartment beforehand. It will help you figure out which of your furniture pieces can be moved to your new place.
How to Downsize to an Apartment from a House
Here are some tips on how to downsize from a house to an apartment that will help make your move smooth and stress-free.
- Reduce your personal belongings
- What to keep, sell and give away
- Find smart storage solutions
- Invest in compact furnishings
- Learn to decorate a small space
Let’s discuss each of these tips in further detail.
Reduce your personal belongings
The first step of downsizing to an apartment is cutting down on possessions. In other words, you need to declutter your entire house before you start packing for the move.
Most of us have a tendency to hoard useless junk without realizing it. Therefore, if you are moving out of a house that you’ve lived in for several years, it’s only natural for you to have accumulated a long list of things that you probably never use. While you may have found a home for such items in the back of your closet or in a cardboard box in your storeroom, you can’t take this clutter along with you to your new home.
The easiest way to go about this is to take a detailed inventory of all your possessions. For each item that you come across, ask yourself if you have used it in the past year or if you are planning to use it in the next six months. This will make paring your belongings much easier.
One of the best tips for downsizing possessions is to start small. Instead of decluttering your entire house all at once, do it one room at a time.
Deciding What to Keep, Sell and Give Away
As you downsize, you must also decide what to do with the items that you don’t need anymore.
One of the best for tips for downsizing your belongings is to divide them into three categories:
- Keep
- Sell
- Donate
The rest is all trash.
To make it easier, get three large cardboard boxes and a few trash bags. Label each of the boxes as ‘keep,’ ‘sell’ or ‘donate’ using a permanent marker. You can now put your belongings into the relevant box as you declutter. A lot of people also suggest creating a ‘Maybe pile’ that can be sorted out later. However, doing so can create more work for you.
Family heirlooms and possessions that hold sentimental value must be separated beforehand. Things that end up in the ‘donation’ box can be given to a charity. Meanwhile, items in the ‘sell’ box can either be sold online or auctioned off, depending on their condition and value. You can also hold a small garage sell before moving to a smaller home and make some money while downsizing.
It is also important to mention that you should only keep around 1/3rd of your overall possessions as you downsize from a house to make the move easier.
You can also check out our detailed guide on how to declutter your home in a weekend or less for more tips and ideas.
Finding smart storage solutions
The biggest problem people face when downsizing to an apartment is the lack of storage space.
Depending on the size of the apartment you are moving into, decluttering your house and paring your belongings might not be enough. If that’s the case, you need to get creative with your storage solutions.
Since apartments usually have less floor space compared to houses, setting up vertical storage is perhaps your best option. Tall cabinets and open shelves that rise up from the ground and draw your eye upward can make your ceilings look taller by accentuating the height of your home. They also have a smaller footprint and can be installed in any corner of your new place.
There are a lot of modern vertical shelves available in the market these days that serve both aesthetic and storage purposes. Moreover, you can consider investing in furniture with built-in storage space. Some examples include beds with drawers, storage ottomans, ceiling cabinets, toy chests for kids, laundry baskets and under-the-sink cabinets.
This guide on creative storage ideas for small homes will also help you transition from a house to an apartment. Similarly, you can also check out some ingenious tips to create more storage space in your bedroom.
Investing in compact furnishing
Buying portable and space-saving furniture can also help you downsize to an apartment from a house.
To save your precious square footage, you should consider investing in pieces that serve more than one function. If you have a lot of bulky or boxy furniture items, you must think about replacing them with smaller and compact pieces that don’t take up as much space. You should also make sure the pieces you choose for your home actually complement your theme and colour palette. Otherwise, you will end up with a lot of mismatched furniture items, making your new place more cluttered and cramped.
If you have a huge dining table but not enough family members to fill every seat around it, you can replace it with a smaller glass table with a wooden or aluminium base when moving to a smaller home. This will help open up space by cutting down on visual clutter and give you more room to move around.
Similarly, your living room couch can double as a bed to accommodate guests when needed. For this purpose, you can invest in a sleeper sofa. Furthermore, you can also replace your coffee table with seating cubes, which can serve the functions of a table as well as that of a seat.
Learning to Decorate a Small Space
The final step after cutting down on possessions and moving to a smaller place is to decorate it.
As you downsize to an apartment, you need to decorate it accordingly. To put it simply, you must learn to edit yourself. There are several tried and test methods for decorating after downsizing that you can experiment with. For example, most interior designers suggested choosing a neutral colour palette for small homes. Lighter hues can make your room look spacious and open, whereas darker tones can have the opposite effect.
Painting your home in a lighter shade also allows you to go with a range of décor ideas. If you fear that your new apartment will look too bland, you can always add a bold, colourful couch to your room or hang a bright curtain to add a splash of colour into your room.
You should make sure every part of your new home is adequately lit, especially the areas that don’t receive a lot of natural light. There are different types of lighting fixtures available in the market to fit different types of décors.
Another tip for decorating after downsizing is to use mirrors in order to make your apartment look bigger than it actually is. Mirrors can also help break the visual clutter and reflect natural light to create the illusion of more space.
Here are some clever mirror hacks that you may find useful while decorating your place.
Last but not the least, don’t forget to add greenery to your home.
Hopefully, these tips on moving from a house to an apartment will help you relocate and decorate your new place. If you have any questions or suggestions pertaining to this guide to downsizing, feel free to get in touch with us by emailing at blog@zameen.com.
You can also take a look at some of the lifestyle adjustments you might have to make when you downsize from a house to an apartment.
In case you are planning to relocate but haven’t decided on the area yet, our comprehensive Area Guides for cities such as Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad might be able to help you out.
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