Making the decision to downsize your home comes with benefits and rewards, but it does raise the question of what you will do with all of your extra belongings. After all, if you have been in your home for an extended period of time, chances are you have accumulated a collection of special memories, keepsakes, furniture and more. So if you are preparing to downsize your home, and you would like to hold on to all of your current belongings, the good news is that you have storage options that can help.Storage offers great transitional provision during the downsizing process, and helps make your adjustment to your new living space easier.

Once you settle on where your new place will be, start going through all of the items in your current home. Do a room by room assessment of how much you can fit into your smaller residence, and then save the overflow items for storage. A good tip is to make room for your most precious keepsakes in your new home, so that the memories you have built through the years are not forgotten. You are already making a transition, and having familiar pieces of furniture and belongings can help make your new place feel like home. With other items, evaluate how often you use them and whether or not they will be functional in your new living space. If it appears that they will only contribute clutter, and no present value, store them. You can always exchange items from storage with what you have in your new home at a later date, but this way, you will not have to sell your belongings or give them away.

If you are downsizing because you want to live more affordably, try sharing a portable storage unit with someone else. Reach out to friends and family to see if anyone else is in need of storage. This is a great way to save economically and it helps if you don’t have enough items to fill up a storage unit.Look for promotions, specials and discounts. This is another great way for you to watch the cost as you downsize your home, but benefit from gaining storage.

While downsizing often means a loss of square footage, storage helps you to keep that extra square footage you need without all of the overhead costs and requirements. You don’t have to pay for the utilities in a storage unit or the cooling costs to keep it temperature controlled. You are only paying for the space you use which helps you save financially in the long run and throughout your downsizing process.

As you prepare to move into your smaller place of residence, you may decide that you want a whole new look and style for your new home. This could mean a delay on your move in date which could impact your move out date. If you run into a time crunch where your new place is not ready in time, utilize storage for all of your belongings, and then scale back to only storing your overflow items once you move in. This will help you to transition into your new living space while still meeting move out and move in dates.