New Year Rightsizing tips

Some folks have become the masters of accumulation. It especially becomes more noticeable as visitors and knick knacks compete for space with piles of old newspapers, spare parts in the dining room and oversized furniture.

This can cause problems. While you want to welcome visitors with open arms you may shutter at the thought of adding out of town guests into this jumbled picture. But, Aunt Susie will need a place to spend the night and of course the nieces and nephews or grandkids will all want to gather at your house.

Now is a great time to think about treating your guests to a few surprise gifts. It’s not exactly re-gifitng but close.  Just by passing along some of those items taking up extra space in your house, your life becomes simplified. File this under ….”you have the right to give your special tea set away if you have not used it in more than 3 years. “

During this time of year, it should be easy to transition those heirlooms, collectibles and other items to your loved ones.

While there’s something naturally uncomfortable about the feeling of moving on that makes it hard to part with items you’ve grown accustomed to, if  put in the right perspective and done during family gatherings, relinquishing those memories will be a bit easier.

Here are a couple of creative options for cleaning up the place that will make for a fun day:

1)    Try pulling out everything that’s taking up unnecessary space in your home and put them all in one room like a giant grab bag. This way everyone decides who gets what.

2)    Have family members go on a scavenger hunt for certain items that you put on a list

3)    Place smaller items like those old glass ornaments and other pieces in a bag and pass one out to everyone while having them guess what’s inside.

4)    Before giving them to loved ones you may even want to get out the video camera and tell a story about some of the items that you might have collected from vacations, or purchased on a whim.

Speaking of video, what looks one way to the naked eye can look completely different through the lens of a camera. If you have trouble deciding what to keep and what to give away now’s the time to break out the camera and take video or even photographs of the rooms in your house to look at them from a different perspective.

In other words, that once white shaggy rug that you purchased to go under the coffee table may now hint of a dingy gray color and doesn’t really do much for the living room once you see it on camera.

Remember, the point of rightsizing is so that you can enjoy your life even more, whether you stay in your home or move to another community that better suits your lifestyle.

An added bonus to slimming down and de-cluttering during this New Year is that if the goal is to move you will be ready for the early birds in real estate. These early birds are the folks that start looking for homes in February before the traditional spring season picks up.