The Benefits of Living in a Smaller Home

By Rita Wilkins
The Downsizing Designer

If you’ve been living in your large home for a while, but lately you’ve started to say… It’s just becoming “too much”. Too much time, maintenance, and expense.

Perhaps you’ve been talking to some of your family or friends who have already downsized and they keep saying how much easier their lives are without the big house.

Perhaps they’ve got you thinking, “Should you downsize to a smaller home too?”

For sure, the large home served you well for many years while you were raising your family, and after all, you’ve worked hard for it, you deserved the big house, your dream house.

But lately you’re not so sure it is your dream house anymore. In fact, it might be becoming a nightmare.

Lately you’ve been asking yourself if you need or even want all of this at the stage of your life.

You’re wondering if you might be happier in a smaller, more manageable home.

One that is easier to maintain.
One that is more affordable.
One that gives you more time and freedom to have a simpler, less stressful life.

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If that sounds like you, you’re not alone. Many baby boomers and even younger generations are questioning the need and desire for “the big house” that they once aspired to and here’s why:

Benefits of Living in a Smaller Home

1. More life

Living in a smaller home means there’s less to maintain, less to manage. It frees you up to do other things you’ve been wanting to do, but had to keep putting them on the back burner because you didn’t have time or energy to do them

Have you‘ve been wondering what it would be like to have more free time to:

Develop that new side gig you’ve been thinking about?
Start painting once again or learning how to play a new instrument?
Or maybe just having free time to do nothing.

A smaller home gives you back some of that time you’ve been missing.

2.Less stuff

Downsizing to a smaller home forces you to address the stuff that you’ve been accumulating and saving for years.

The overflowing closets filled with clothes that may no longer fit you or that you might rarely wear.
The unopen boxes in your basement or attic that you have no idea what’s even inside.
The family heirlooms you inherited that you have been saving for your kids… only to find out that your kids have no interest in them or that they have no space in their own smaller homes.

While emotional and exhausting, the process of downsizing and decluttering, the journey to owning less stuff is actually a journey to having more freedom.

3. Just enough

How will you know when you have “just enough”?

This might sound like an existential question but it’s not intended to be.

Getting to having “just enough” is a journey. A journey well worth the time, the effort, and the emotional rollercoaster. When you arrive at a point in your life where you have all you want and all you need there is a new kind of peace, freedom, and joy. You are no longer striving to accumulate more, prove your success, or impress others. You are simply content because you have enough.

Our consumer culture has programmed us to believe “bigger is better” but when you…

Acknowledge that your big dream house has become a nightmare.
Give yourself permission to let go of the long-held belief that bigger is better.
Start to consider that you might actually be happier owning less house and less stuff.

You begin to realize that there is so much more to life when you live with less. You create the opportunity to live more.

I hope that this has provided some food for thought about living in a smaller home.

If you want to learn more, CLICK HERE to purchase my Amazon #1 Best Selling book, Downsize Your Life, Upgrade Your Lifestyle: Secrets to more Time, Money, and Freedom.