How to Downsize

Downsizing, including downsizing your home and your belongings in general, may be necessary if tough times force you into a smaller home or into temporary quarters. But downsizing can also be a liberating experience. Here's some steps that you can take to downsize your life and your belongings. You can save money and you may even feel better with your simpler life.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Start with the clothes. If your closet is full of old clothes, or clothes that you don't wear, get rid of them without looking back. If you haven't worn in the past year (or season), then it should go. Clothes can be dead weight when you have to move, and they do you no good if you don't use them. It is not as if most clothes make collectors items as time passes.

2. Look around your home or apartment for anything that you are holding onto only because somebody gave it to you. Take a picture of it for the memory and then donate/recycle/toss. (Same goes for clothing, take a picture of yourself in it for the memory or a thank you card, then toss!)

3. Get rid of your CD's. Load your CD's into iTunes, or a similar computer music library program. Then get rid of the physical discs. You'll have less stuff to move around, and you'll have your whole music library at your fingertips on your computer. If you are concerned about losing your music if your computer crashes, you can consider using an online backup service such as Mozy. A number of services offer free backup up to certain limit, and then larger backup for a small fee.

4. Move on to your DVD's. Sell them if you can. Think about how often you watch any particular DVD, even your favorites. You can get a subscription to an online service, such as Netflix, and have access to the same movies without lugging around a pile of DVD's. Besides, in a few years time, likely all movies will be available on demand on the internet and/or through your cable box (and those two things may be one and the same in five years). So get ahead of the technology curve, and celebrate by having less stuff.

5. Examine the file cabinet. You don't need your old telephone bill from 3 years ago, nor your grocery receipts from 6 months ago. Keep tax records for 7 years, utility bills for a few months, and loan documents for the life of the loan plus a year or two. Sign up for e-billing and prevent the reduced pile of paperwork from growing again. If you're not sure about retaining certain records, then make a big pile of them, and if you have a document scanner at the office, scan them into a couple of PDFs and throw away the paper records.

6. Look at your cellphone bill, and downsize the monthly plan. Many people don't use all of their minutes, and sometimes amass significant "rollover minutes." You can also live with a cheaper plan by calling during reduced billing or "free" times, such as nights or weekends.

7. Ditch your TV for the internet. Or, if you must watch TV, turn your computer into your TV by buying an inexpensive TV card which can fit into an expansion slot of your computer. This is a good idea if you are living with others in a tight space and don't share the same TV preferences.