Downsizing Without Regret

Downsizing in retirement is common. By the time you hit retirement age, your children have moved out and likely have lives and possibly families of their own. Since they’re now fully established in their own worlds, there is less reason to keep the family home for them to return to. 

There’s also the practicality of it all. Keeping a larger home requires more time, money, and effort. There’s more to clean, more to heat, and more to look after. You’ll also need to pay higher property taxes and maintenance costs on a larger home.

There’s also the reality of aging. As you get older, you may not want to live in a multi-story house where you’ll need to go up and down stairs several times a day. This may not be a problem when you first retire, but it could become an issue later.

Of course, while downsizing in retirement may be practical, that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Your home contained your entire life for many, many years. It’s where you experienced so many meaningful moments. It’s where you celebrated and cried. Depending on your lifestyle and how long you lived there, it might have been the placed where your children took their first steps, where you held holidays dinners, and where you welcomed in relatives coming in from out of town.

Your home is the place where you return to after a long day, exhale deeply, and finally feel comfortable and relaxed.

So, it can be very tough to leave. 

How To Say Goodbye to a Family Home

Understanding the emotions associated with downsizing in retirement can help you navigate them, deal with them, and start looking forward to the future instead of looking back in sadness.

Acknowledge How Your Feel

It’s not silly or immature to feel sadness, worry, or fear when moving out of your family home. Theses are all real emotions and ones that you should not feel ashamed of. Sometimes journaling can help you recognize and understand your feelings. Writing things down often helps give you a sense of perspective and calms your mind, allowing you to think about things other than what you’re sad or worried about. 

Talk to Your Family

You’re probably not the only one feeling emotional about leaving your home. Your children will probably miss the house as well. They’ll miss their room, they’ll miss the gatherings, and they’ll miss the feeling and safety and comfort they get when they’re in the house.

Other relatives may feel the same as well, especially if your home was the meeting spot for family and social events.

Talk to them about those feelings. Sometimes sitting together, reminiscing, and being nostalgic for the past can actually lighten your mood. It can help to talk about the future as well. Plan for where gatherings will happen from now on, good places for your children to stay when they visit, and how life will be once you’re in your new home. This will help all of you see that there’s good things in the future too, not just in the past.

Take Time

If you have the luxury of time when leaving the property, take advantage of it. This process isn’t easy.

Not only are you saying goodbye to the house itself, but you’re probably going to downsize your assets as well. This potentially means getting rid of items that you’ve had for a long time and that probably have a lot of meaning to you. 

As you go through items, memories will probably rush in. You’ll think about the family dinners you had at that table, the celebrations you toasted with those glasses, and all the of experiences you’ve had with everything you’re selling or giving away.

This is all normal. Know that the moments will remain even after the items are gone. Writing things down or taking photos can help you stayed tied to the memories even after the physical items are no longer there. 

Look at the Positives 

The entire process may have you feeling sad, confused, and even anxious.

You may feel worried about the future. If you’re moving to a different city or town, you might be concerned that you won’t fit in. If you’re shifting from a house to a condo, this might feel very strange, especially if you’ve never lived in a multi-unit building before.

While all those concerns are valid, you should try to shift your thoughts from worry to optimism. Think about why you’re moving. Maybe you want a new walkable lifestyle. Maybe you want to be closer to your children or grandchildren. Maybe your new lifestyle will be more convenient or more fun or more accessible. These are all positive things and thinking about them gives you something to feel good about. If you can reframe your thoughts to the positive, you’ll see this experience as a good one, not just a sad or scary one.