Minimizing & Downsizing

Minimizing & Downsizing

When you want to travel the world, having a lot of possessions can hold you back and make you feel less mobile. In preparation for our 8-week trip to Asia, we are moving all of our belongings into storage in an effort to save on rent expenses while traveling. As we are combining our things and moving them into a 10×10 box, this was the perfect opportunity for us to practice some minimizing. Let’s just say that one Netflix movie night watching the documentary, “Minimalism”, sparked our minimalist mind-set! 

Moving is the perfect opportunity to downsize. We found that we were holding on to many objects that we don’t use for an unknown future reason. We took the mindset of if you didn’t use it in the past year or more, it is safe to say that you can donate it and you won’t miss it later. As we were deciding what we didn’t need to keep with us, we simply asked ourselves have we used it recently and does it bring joy to our lives? If the answer was no to one or both of those questions then out it goes!

There are a few actions that we took to help us downsize:

Sell items on eBay

I decided to start selling items on eBay as I was holding on to accessories, clothes, and shoes that I’ve had for a very long time and had not worn in ages! Using eBay was an easy place to post photos, write a brief description, and bam the next thing I realize I am getting bids! I have a few eBay tips that I have learned:

1. Have the buyer pay for the shipping, but make sure you list the item with enough shipping to cover the costs. Using a scale or utilizing light packaging will help you meet the weight requirements.

2. Communicate with the buyers. If you are going to be a few days late with shipping, let the buyer know so they aren’t wondering where their package is and they will appreciate the heads-up!

3. Save boxes to use for shipping your packages.

4. Use the eBay app on your phone. It really is easy to use especially when it comes to uploading pictures.

5. Make sure your PayPal account is linked to your eBay account.

Sell items at a Garage Sale

Let me just tell you up front, having a garage sale is a lot of work! We were fortunate enough to join in on a neighborhood wide garage sale at my best friend’s house. We had several families meet at the house and bring what they wanted to sell. Even with all of this support, you spend a lot of time setting up your things and pricing them, only to bring everything down to $1 as no one at a garage sale wants to pay more than $1 for anything! A whole day of effort however we did walk away with some money. What is our biggest advice to successfully garage sale? Be sure to have a charity on hand to pick up anything left over from the sale. If you were going to sell the item and it wasn’t purchased, then you might as well donate it and get the clutter out of your life.

Also, PS – Fanny packs are a life-saver at Garage Sales! I can’t wait till they come back in style and it is socially acceptable to wear them anywhere!

Donate!

This brings us to our final tip for downsizing. Just donate your belongings! One person’s trash can be another person’s treasure. We took a few trips to Goodwill to drop off bags of clothes and items that we did not need. We also placed “free” boxes on the street and let our neighbors enjoy what we no longer needed. September 1st is the most popular moving day in Boston, so it is quite common to see many pieces of furniture out on the street and people scooping up free items to decorate their new apartments.

After a busy day of packing and stretch wrapping everything we own, we were successful in fitting all of our belongings into our 10×10 storage unit! I will admit, I was pretty nervous after filling our U-Haul to the brim with furniture, but we were pleasantly surprised with the amount of space in our storage unit. It was a long a tiring day, but now we are set up to enjoy our trip to Asia without worrying about rent and utilities costs. We have a few more weeks of living out of suitcases filled with weekend trips and staying at friend’s houses (thanks guys!). Then it is time for us to pack our backpacks head out on the adventure of a lifetime! Follow along for more stories leading up to our adventure!