Celebrating over 1,000 Clients and Personal Downsizing
May 24, 2023
Junk Drawer: Deconstructed
July 27, 2023
Today marks one year since we purchased a one bedroom, one and a half bath 900 square foot condo in St. Petersburg. And in mid July 2022, we put our 2100 square foot home on the market. At the end of November 2022, we made the move to our new smaller space. We thought we had downsized when we moved from our family home of 24 years in 2016 but on this second round some of the harder decisions were made.
Quite a few of our Customers are in the same situation; they have moved from family homes up north to single family or spacious condos, townhomes or villas here in Florida. Now they are moving again to spaces half the size of what they currently own.
Sentimental items pose some of the greatest challenges. They were some of the items retained in the first downsize but now space limits what can be kept.
Let’s start with photos.
Most homes have closets filled with boxes of photos. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Don’t look at the mountain of photos as insurmountable. It can be overwhelming. Go bit by bit. Bite by bite.
A card table or banquet table (if space allows) may be a great place to launch the process.
1. Take a stack of photos (50 or less) and eliminate all clear duplicates.
2. Eliminate any scenery photos without people in them. Aging scenery photos are typically grainy and unmemorable.
3. Eliminate any photos of people you don’t know and no one can identify. Very common when sorting inherited parents’ photos.
4. Bring like categories together.
a. Sort by PEOPLE: You, you and your significant, your offspring, your siblings and respective family, extended family by group (mom’s family, dad’s family, distant family) etc.
b. Sort by OCCASION: Holiday photos, travel photos, baby pics
c. Sort by TIME, chronology within categories. You decide the breakdown by era. Historic photos, grammar school, high school, college, early married years, or by year, pre-1970, 1970-1980, 1980-1990s, 1990s to 2000, early 2000, Hopefully, at some point in this century your photos have gone digital. Creating digital files of photos is another session.
Labels are so helpful throughout the sorting process. And post notes can be reusable labels. Use post it notes of different colors directly on the banquet table. You might use a green post it and stack all of the holiday photos in that pile. A blue post it for all baby photos. Travel photos may be in a pile with a yellow label. You can work through the categories in any order that feels right. The goal is to bring like items together and then distill again and again within those groups.
It is now time to decide if you want to retain the original photos or scan them into files by category and eliminate the originals. This feels strange I know because many of us find comfort in holding a photo and paper has always been a part of our lives. But the reality is that photos disintegrate, and you may see evidence of it during this sorting process. Scanning them is actually a way to retain them long term, if you desire. And scanners are so reasonable to purchase. The process of scanning goes quickly once all is sorted. You will see mountains of boxes of photos slimmed down to one or two or none, if scanned. Sea of calm organization.