HOW I GOT RID OF MY STUFF: Tips & Tricks for Downsizing to Move Into Your Tiny Home.

[Music] vegan homemade gingerbread coffee creamer cashew based let me know if you want the recipe it's really good [Music] hey everyone welcome back and if you're new welcome my name is adelina and i make videos about living in my tiny house one of the questions i get asked is was it hard to downsize today i thought i would just discuss how i went through the process of downsizing particularly my clothing and housewares and give you some suggestions of how you could do it again each person is different and what works for me might not work for you but here's how i did it i'm not a minimalist i joke that i'm a minimalist in training i want to embrace that lifestyle more and more and i think i have in a lot of ways i try and only bring things into my home and into my world that i really love or that are really useful i certainly have been the kind of person that collected a lot of things in my past life but that is not how i like to live now i have been following the minimalists ryan nicodemus and joshua fields melbourne and i will link that site down below they actually have a documentary on netflix that you might want to watch if this is the kind of lifestyle that you want to embrace and it's called minimalism i think that's what it's called again i'll link that down below they discuss their journey from being consumers extreme consumers and you know living in the corporate world and all of that to minimalism as their way of life and their philosophy of moving through the world and i found it quite interesting especially the sections where they talk about how they downsize their things and one of the things that they discuss is the minimalism challenge and i did this actually multiple times in the year or two leading up to when i sold my condo and actually moved into the tiny house the minimalism challenge is uh it's actually a lot of fun and it is a challenge you start at the beginning of a month and on day one you get rid of one thing on day two you get rid of two things on day three you get rid of three things so by the end of the month you get rid of 31 things and by get rid of you either donate sell or if you can't then you dispose of you know recycle if you can so they actually leave your house you think it's going to be hard and then before you know it you're like having to hold yourself back because you have more than things that you want to get rid of then that day so the first thing a place i started was actually my kitchen drawers in general and i easily did that for a month and then i did actually did it twice because there was also utensils and you know bakeware and things like that that i didn't need that was easy and most of that got donated i did my pantry closet in the hallway i did my closet i did my jewelry i did my garage my linen cupboard you can do so many areas of your house with this challenge it's amazing how much you can get rid of just by doing this one fun challenge over and over again also for quite a few years now i have not allowed people to buy me gifts because i don't need anything and i knew i wanted to go tiny and i certainly didn't need more things to then have to downsize so i encouraged the people that insisted on buying me something to get me experiences or consumables so if you want to buy me wine no problem right chocolates a card to my favorite coffee shop those are things that i can use or better yet why don't we go for dinner or go see a play go see a movie uh have some sort of experience like that so that was another way that i sort of over time just accumulated less which made the process of paring down to move into the tiny house easier after i did the minimalism challenge a couple of times and my closets were still full what i did was i turned every hanger backwards so instead of the hook facing in the hook faced out i did that at the beginning of one year january 1st and then over the next year every time i wore something when i would put it back i would turn the hanger the other direction every season i would go through and look at all the items for that season that were still not turned around and made the determination did i need to keep this or really was this something to get rid of i think it's important to do that over like all of the seasons because you're going to have things that you only wear in the winter especially if you live in a cold climate like i do and then there's also a lot of things that are special occasion like dresses for parties or christmases weddings in calgary alberta we have stampede every july where everybody in the city dresses in western wear with cowboy boots belt buckles and cowboy hat for 11 days so you need some things for that that you know you're only going to wear a couple times a year but you know still things that you want to keep that little challenge is super easy to do it doesn't it doesn't take a lot of time to do that it really gives you this visual illustration of what you actually wear and what is just in there because you bought it and you never wore it once i had started my build and the house was framed in i knew that it was time to really get serious especially about my clothes so what i did was i asked my builder to measure my closet rod space in the tiny house now before i had seen the house under construction the rod was going to be going horizontally right across so that's the space that she measured and it was just under five feet after i saw the house under construction i changed that and had the rod going the whole depth of the closet instead so it's quite a bit longer and there's it made so much more sense to do it that way but i hadn't really thought about it yet until i saw it so she gave me that measurement and i decided that i was only going to bring the clothes that would fit into that amount of closet rod space minus t-shirts and underwear socks things like that but i hung my sweaters up and i hung my jeans up for this experiment this let me tell you this one was an interesting challenge i like to think of myself as an experiment of one and i love challenging myself so once i got that measurement i pulled everything out of my closet in the condo and i had a small but a walk-in closet with double rods on both sides and a dresser in there so a lot of stuff and it was full of a lot of clothes that i never wore so i absolutely took everything out of my closet and i laid it on my bed in my bedroom and then i measured out the closet rod space of five feet and i i put masking tape so i knew exactly how much space i had to work with so then i proceeded to try every single thing on and if it didn't fit or i didn't love it it automatically went into the donate pile took the time to think about it was i going to use it and did i really need it if i did then it got hung up if i wasn't sure what i did was i gave myself a not sure pile and i went through everything and when i got done two-thirds of the things did not go back into my closet a because they wouldn't fit and b because they didn't fit me i didn't love them or i never used them i had bags and bags of clothes to go to goodwill it was really an eye-opener because i didn't think i was a hoarder and obviously i'm not by the technical definition but i was amazed at how much crap i had accumulated living in that townhouse for 15 years 16 years by that point everything that was back in the closet was something i was going to take i had hung up my jeans and i hung up my sweaters so i knew they would fit and that was a huge hurdle that took me a whole weekend to do by the time i was done i felt so much lighter mentally and literally and it was a really great exercise and i think that that's something that is really worth doing the basket that i had of things i wasn't sure i wanted to get rid of but wasn't sure i needed to keep i actually just put in a box and then when i sold my condo and the items that i did keep my clothes mostly kitchenware things like that i put into a small storage unit and i put that box in there i taped it up i labeled it and i just left it when i moved into the tiny house and i opened the box after not having had that stuff for about three months it was really easy at that point then to get rid of most of what was in there allowing myself to keep it temporarily made paring down a little less difficult and i think that's a good philosophy for paring down in general allow yourself to keep some things you're not sure about maybe tuck them away put them in a special bin or box so that you're not uh potentially getting rid of something that you might want in the future the biggest fear when you're downsizing and you're sort of purging the things in your life that no longer serve you is the fear that you might in the future regret having gotten rid of something you might get rid of something that you find that you do need even though you didn't need it for a couple of years speaking from experience but you're always worried that you know maybe next month i might actually need that thing so that's why allowing yourself to have a bin of maybes is really important mentally you do have to be fairly brutal about making decisions when you're paring down you cannot agonize over every item and you will agonize over every item at the beginning of the process and you'll very quickly realize you don't have time to spend that much time on each item after a very short period of time at least for me what i found was i would pick something up and and very quickly be able to go yeah no nope nope nope yep keep in that one nope don't don't need that and you really really really do get much faster at it but at the beginning it can be very stressful it can be overwhelming so allowing yourself to have that maybe pile is really important my advice to you is to create some challenges for yourself where you play these games that make the process maybe a little bit more fun those are three things that are super easy to do they don't cost anything and they will make you feel like you've accomplished something really big and you have accomplished something really big or sort of feeling of when you're deciding to move into a tiny house when you're deciding that this is the lifestyle for you one of the things you're going to have to do is pare down unless you're already a minimalist and if you are i am envious and uh i admire you to no end but if you were like me and you definitely weren't if you were a minimalist in training then you're going to need to do this process and i think setting yourself little challenges to starting way in advance will really help you with this process now if you're a bit more extreme you can do what ryan did from the minimalists when he started his journey he had a house full of stuff and he actually packed up everything in his house he wasn't moving but he packed up everything in his house every dish every tool every towel every bit of clothing he even packed up his bedding all of that he packed it all up and then over the space of the next month i think it was he only pulled out what he needed i mean the first night he pulled out his bedding so he could make his bed and then you know he's he needed to pull out a cup and a plate and a fork and a knife and things like that and at the end of that month or that period he got rid of everything that he had not needed in that space of time that is an extreme challenge if you can do that that is incredible like if you're that hardcore and you're that determined to get rid of things quickly that could be something that might work i mean the stuff's already in boxes for donating after you're done this process and you really know what you need so you could give that a try again i think that that's a bit more hardcore than i am but it was an interesting thing and if you watch the documentary you'll see them talking about this process so it's really quite interesting when it comes to kitchenware and bakeware and things like that i had a bit more of a struggle than i did with clothing surprisingly i didn't have a lot of stuff i didn't think but once i started pulling everything out i was shocked you only need so many cake pans you only need one muffin tin maybe one regular size and one oversized you don't need all of these things that you end up buying because they're kind of cool or you want to try something i found that a bit more of a challenge because i was i think more emotionally attached to these things the small kitchen gadgets were more of a challenge for me because i had a crock pot i had a rice cooker i had my instant pot already at that point i had a big blender and a small one and then a magic bullet i gave most of them to my kids and in the back of my mind i kind of thought well if i want it back i can always get it back from them and i have not needed to get any of those things back especially the crock pot and the rice cooker i mean i have an instant pot it does all of those things so i certainly didn't need that i only needed my vitamix blender i did keep the magic bullet because it's it's nice for making really quick sauces and things like that i had a hand mixer and i have my kitchenaid stand mixer did not need the hand mixer that ended up going to my my younger kid who likes to cook i also had cutlery for fancy cutlery and everyday cutlery i had a set of 12 christmas dishes and then i had my fiesta wear and then i had a set of white dishes from ikea i had champagne glasses and liqueur glasses and multiple sets of wine glasses i have no idea why i thought i needed all of those things so other than the fiestaware all the other dishes went by by i got rid of the fancy cutlery i kept my everyday cutlery because i liked it better i kept six wine glasses and my mugs from my fiesta where everything else got donated for me the kitchenware was more of a challenge because i i like the little gadgets but i haven't missed anything yet so i think that that's key i've been here well over a year and i've yet to miss anything that i got rid of the minimalists have this saying it's uh twenty dollars and twenty minutes something like that and it's a philosophy that i definitely agree with it addresses the fear that a lot of people have that they might get rid of something that they will then need in the future and their reasoning is that 99.999 of the things that you get rid of that you might miss can be replaced within 20 minutes for less than 20 dollars you can go down to the thrift store you can go down to a second hand store and find all sorts of things for cheap or you can go and buy something for less than you know within 20 minutes when i moved in here and i didn't have gas yet because it took quite a while for them almost four weeks for them to get the gas hooked up i couldn't cook i had an instant pot and i had the air fryer but i you know i was limited and i had given away my little george foreman panini press so i went down to valley village and for i think it was four dollars i bought this tiny little george foreman sandwich press and i used that again 20 minutes less than 20 dollars i always intended to re-donate it when i was done i have it it's still there but i definitely need to do that if that helps to sort of put your mind at ease when you worry about having to get rid of things maybe you know keep that in mind that the majority of things that you give away you won't miss you won't need or you'll find something else that you did keep that will do the the same job finally i just want to say one thing you don't have to be a minimalist to live in a tiny house if you've watched my tiny house tour you know i have a lot of things i have a lot of storage i made sure to build a lot of storage into my tiny house so that i had a place for everything because i think that's important but i didn't get rid of everything i have a lot of things in my kitchen because i like to cook and i like to bake the things i kept made me happy or they were super useful and i think that that should be your main criteria when you're doing you're paring down and downsizing getting ready to move into your tiny house or your small space it's not a competition some people kind of act like it is and will accuse you of having way too many things that's not your problem keep the things that really matter to you i have a bin in my storage shed under the gooseneck that has photo albums and things from when my kids were little and i have no intention of ever getting rid of those there's no reason not to keep the things that you really love or that are really useful you don't have to be a minimalist but you do have to minimize the things the amount of things that you own if you can't do that this is going to be a challenging lifestyle for you because you're building a space that has limited storage no matter how efficient you are with that storage it's still limited decide what's more important is having the freedom of living in a tiny house and having less to maintain and clean having you know lower bills maybe getting rid of your mortgage altogether or maybe you want to move into a tiny house because you want to be mobile and you can build one that you're going to move around if that is your priority then the stuff needs to become less important to you and the home and the lifestyle that you want to live needs to be your priority keep that in mind and it will make it easier for you to make the decisions that you need to make to pare down but i know you can do it because if i can do it you can do it right everything that you're gonna go through when you're downsizing i absolutely went through it's gonna be overwhelming and frustrating but man is it awesome when you get it done and then when you move into your tiny house you're going to be so grateful you did i hope that was helpful i know that it can be overwhelming but it's worth it if you have any questions please let me know what would be really useful for all of the friends that are watching is if you have any tips and tricks that you used to downsize or little challenges that you do that you play with yourself that's not what i meant to say any games that you play to help you minimize and downsize anyways i will talk to you guys next week thanks for watching take care please subscribe and i will talk to you next time for those of you wondering where my big tiny house cat is there she is now that is the way you spend a snowy afternoon

Channel: myBIGtinyhouselife

Views: 530,819

Keywords: Minimalism, downsizing, tiny living, tiny house Canada, Canadian Tiny House On Wheels, Winter in a Tiny House, Canadian Tiny House Winter, Tiny house life, Tiny house Alberta, Tiny house on wheels, THOW, simple living, small home, Tiny house nation

Id: e562e3xBSNU

Length: 21min 35sec (1295 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 11 2020