How to Downsize Furniture Before Moving, Using One Piece of Graph Paper

Anh had already bought her packing boxes when we met. She was moving from a four-bedroom house in Etobicoke to a two-bedroom condo, and she planned to bring the dining set her family had gathered around for thirty years.

I asked her not to pack it yet. Instead, we sat down at the kitchen table with a paper-and-pencil tool I use with every downsizing client: a floor plan of the new home drawn to scale on graph paper.

I draw each room one square to a foot, then cut out the furniture at the same scale. I draw a seven-foot sofa as a strip seven squares long and a dining table as a small paper rectangle.

Then I ask the client to move the pieces around.

I want the client to do this part. In Anh's case, she could slide the paper furniture around the plan so she saw clearly how much room each piece needed.

When she put the dining table in the main room and added the chairs, she saw the problem immediately.

She could get the table into the room, but she couldn't move comfortably around it.

That's why I do this before anyone starts packing. You can fit a piece of paper furniture within a room's measurements on a floor plan but still find you can't move around the room easily. You need enough space to pull out chairs, walk to the balcony, and move through the room without squeezing past furniture.

When Anh saw that on paper, she could ask a different question.

Instead of asking, "How can I possibly get rid of this table?" she could ask, "If I don't take this table with me, what do I want to do with it?"

She could offer it to a family member, sell it at auction or donate it. She might also discover that nobody wanted it, and then she could decide what to do next.

Anh made those decisions sitting at her kitchen table several weeks before the move. I would much rather have a client make them there than on moving day while the movers wait outside.

You can also plan a room with apps such as MagicPlan, Floorplanner, Planner 5D and RoomSketcher. I still use graph paper because most of my clients understand how to use it immediately. We can spread the plan across the kitchen table and move the furniture around together, so they spend their energy deciding what they want to bring instead of learning new software.

Julie Morgenstern calls this "containerizing": you decide what to keep by working within the amount of space you have.

You need to do the same thing when you move to a smaller home.

If you're moving from 2,000 square feet to 1,200, you will have 40 percent less floor space. That doesn't mean you should automatically get rid of 40 percent of your belongings. It means you need to decide what you can use comfortably in 1,200 square feet.

That's why I don't ask clients to start with boxes. I ask them to start with the new home and work backwards from the space they will actually have.

Before you decide what to pack, find out what you have room to bring.

Spend one afternoon with a floor plan and a piece of graph paper before you start packing. You can decide what belongs in the new home before you pay movers to carry it there, and you won't arrive with a second round of downsizing waiting for you.

Cathy Borg is a professional organizer and partner at In and Out Organizing, which helps adults 55+ across the Greater Toronto Area downsize, clear estates and manage moves. A former high school English teacher, she has spent fourteen years helping clients decide what to keep and how to let the rest go with less stress.

Thinking about a move to a smaller home? In and Out Organizing helps GTA adults 55+ plan the downsize before the boxes come out. Book a downsizing consultation and start with the space you'll actually have.