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It's about right-sizing and only the person knows what size is right for him/her/them. The key guiding principle I can share though is this: Own the house, not the house owning you. Live by that and you'll be fine.
My only comment: Simplicity is a sign of sophistication!
Even tho' I've downsized I continue to do in other ways. About every 3 months I comb my entire house asking myself: Will I ever use this again? Why am I keeping this? Will I ever read this book again?
I would be comfortable "downsizing" - my house is already tiny, but I don't want lawn or exterior maintenance in the future, so I'd like an even smaller condo - but would always need to own at least one house somewhere, even if I just rent it out to pay for my own rent elsewhere. I'm not willing to leave myself vulnerable to the vagaries of the rental market, especially these days.
We had about a 3000sq ft home near a large city. We had three floors. We liked it when we lived there. When we retired we moved to a small city and looked for a small, but well appointed house. There were none, so we decided to build.
We now have a modern design 2200 sq ft home with mountain views all on one floor. It actually feels bigger without stairs. We added a conditioned storage room underneath and a three car garage. We feel we could even cut back more, maybe 1800 sq ft. We had to jettison some furniture, but all in all we do it again. Easy to clean, easy to get around in and plenty of room.
Square footage is a bit larger, but there are far fewer rooms. (We actually have a walk-in closet for the first time, and a nicely sized master bathroom that we can both fit in, for example).
We moved into a patio home - one level living for us - that is barrier free.
All doors can accommodate a wheelchair/scooter if that is ever necessary.
We literally got rid of half our possessions when we moved here. The kids HAD to take all their things. We got rid of all the items we kept "in case they were needed". We donated an obscene amount of construction materials to Habitat. We pared down to the life we have now, and not the life we used to have.
Our kids are in their thirties so they were ordered to take their stuff a few years after they graduated college. The problem we have now is all the albums of photos we have from when they were born up until phones became the norm for taking photos.
Our kids want us to scan the photos but we said No Way! We have a life and an active one at that and the hours/days/weeks it would take to scan the photos is not something we're willing to do. I guess we're horrible parents
What have others done with their photo albums? Our kids don't want to spend their time scanning them either and I can't say I blame them. The photos might get ruined when we take them off of the pages they've been on for thirty odd years. Remember those with the clear film that lays on top off the pages of photos?
Back to the original question - downsizing has been wonderful for us but I'm the type who likes to keep my closets and garages very organized and I don't mind donating things we don't use or don't wear so my emotional attachment to things is minimal. We don't do big sit down dinners anymore so if we have a group of people over it's very casual and I love it this way.
To the OP's thoughts about a condo - just remember that you'll be sharing walls and a lot of smells can come through the open windows or balconies along with noise.
Not all the pictures are worth keeping, many are redundant, many have people/places that won't mean anything to the kids. Select out the ones that you want the kids to have, make them each ONE album with clear labels as to who/what/where/when.
I've got basically one medium Rubbermaid tote for each kid with things that I want them to have. I still have to make them each their photo album but I plan to work on that in the coming months.
When it comes time to give them their totes they can choose to do with them what they please but I do hope that they like what's inside of them.
How I dealt with photo albums is that I made one album for each of my 3 kids. I picked the best pictures and did it in chronological order. They loved them. I threw away any horrible pictures and duplicates that I didn’t need. I made an album for myself and threw the rest away.
Our kids are in their thirties so they were ordered to take their stuff a few years after they graduated college. The problem we have now is all the albums of photos we have from when they were born up until phones became the norm for taking photos.
Our kids want us to scan the photos but we said No Way! We have a life and an active one at that and the hours/days/weeks it would take to scan the photos is not something we're willing to do. I guess we're horrible parents
What have others done with their photo albums?
Those went to the kids with all their other stuff.
We took one last look down memory lane, then passes them along.
I really don't care if they scan the photos, keep the albums as is, or toss them.
Their albums, their choice.
You did better than I did in passing stuff along!
Mine were out of college and were homeowners for 10 years before I managed to put down my foot. Good job!
We downsized recently from a 2000 sq ft house to a 1100 sq ft house and are perfectly happy with that move. We do have a basement for "storage", but at this point in our lives, we want to have less stuff. Less stuff to me is less to clean and keep up. I love it!
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The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. ~Henry David Thoreau
Forcibly downsizing for a pre-retirement career move, regrets are legion. Most of the successful condo/apartment-dwellers are presumably not car-people. Having been used to a large garage with decades' worth of accumulated tools, not to mention the subject cars... to have downsized was incommodious and jarring. Today I still mumble privately, how I miss proper precision gauges, diagnostic equipment, hydraulics and so on. At some distant future, I hope to rebuild, the dream being a workshop of several thousand square feet, filled with equipment. That shall have to wait. Residential quarters can be small, except for accommodating a library. "Small" is of course relative.
Thus for the dwelling and improvements. Land? Not small at all, if fortune smiles, luck holds, wisdom accumulates, and the markets cooperate. Having once upon a time lived on single-digit acreage, I've found that to be woefully insufficient for proper privacy. The desire, however facile, is for a least a thousand yards to the next dwelling, business or road.
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