Life-Changing Move: Decluttering, Simplifying, Downsizing

Foreign Hi there. I am about to go on adventure with my family and it's big. It's a big news for us. But we are moving and I'm super excited. Long story short, we were supposed to be here in this town that we live in for another year. And we had bought some property and we have a house and we were going to work on on it the next year and we were going to eventually move there once my daughter goes to college. But our timeline got turned up a little bit. So we are moving there in a couple months. And I had originally planned on getting my house ready and being ready for this move over the year, but I have two months and I'm really excited. I know it's a lot of work, but that's okay. But I thought, what a unique opportunity for me to record and post to YouTube all the different things that I'm going to go through as I work on this and prepare for this move. I'm going to downsize. We moved into this house, there were seven of us. So my pantry is set up for seven people. Our linen closet set up for seven people. Everything is set up for seven people. And since then, three people moved out. Last year, my son and his wife and my granddaughter moved out. They got a place nearby and they moved out. So there's been four of us. And now that there's four of us, we're gonna actually end up splitting the household. So I'm super excited. But my husband and I were going from a 2500 square foot house down to an 800 square foot house. So you can only imag and you know some of the challenges with that. But I'm so excited. I've wanted to move to the mountains for a long time, and we got this unique opportunity to buy some property here in California that I absolutely love. We're gonna live with the redwoods, and that's exactly where I want to be. So I'm really excited. So I'm going to be able to show all of the downsizing that I do, the simplification how to pack for moves and all of that that I'm going to go through over the next two months. And then obviously all of the challenges of unpacking and getting settled in such a small house. So I'm start with my pots and pans. I'm gonna pull all of them out and take a peek because like I said, there was seven of us here at one time, so we have way more than we need. My son moved out, so the process has already started. So he's moved out, and I want to be able to get him some pans. I've already bought him. No, I already bought him pans like ours, which I love, but I haven't want to get him some sort of pots. And I figured I'll give him some, and then any that I don't take, I'll just donate whoever needs them. So I'm gonna start the process. I've already pulled some things refrigerator, and none of these I have used. This is a giant pot. It's a nice one. I've never used it. We have used some of the cast irons. We're going to take one cast iron with us, probably give one to my son. And I have an entire bunch of pots and pans in this cabinet below me. I'm going to pull out now so we can take a look at it. And you can. I can walk you the process that I walk my clients through when we're trying to downsize, declutter, and get their kitchen organized. So I'll walk you through the process right now. Okay, so here is what I just pulled out. And this is what I would recommend for any of my clients. You start with pulling everything out so that you can look at what you have. And now what I'm going to do is start the process of sorting things out. So what I'm going to start with is just sorting things. So in making sure I match lids with pans, the easy thing for me to start with are my. Are my actual frying pans. These are my frying pans. Oh, sorry about the noise. These are my frying pans. I love these. These are amazing. We have three sizes of these. These I'm definitely keeping. We absolutely love them. They're so easy to clean. They're great to cook with. Everything is amazing. So I will do this. I actually bought my son a set of. I'll link them below. These are the most amazing pans if you are in the need for getting pans. So these are definitely what I'm going to keep. We don't need any other fried pans than these. So I'm going to set these aside now. Along the lines of that we have three skillets, and I really don't think we need both all of them. I'm not keeping this one. This is definitely going to get donated. I don't remember why we have that, but we never use it. I think that I will let my husband decide and I'll put on the screen what he decided, but I think we Only need one of these two skillets. Remember, I'm going from this big house down to 800 square feet. So I'm not. I don't have a huge kitchen. I have a very small kitchen. So we'll need to pick one of these two. He's the one that uses these. I never use this. So I'll let him pick. So I'll put on the screen which one I'm keeping. So that's easy. So those were easy decisions to make. I have this pan. I think I'm going to try to clean it and get rid of it. I don't. My son doesn't need it. So if I can clean it up, it's a good quality pan. But it's really destroyed. I don't know what happened to it. But if I can clean it, I will definitely donate it. So that another one that's going to go. So there's two that are going. I have a ceramic one. I don't use it. It's really cute. I think if I ate eggs, which I don't eat eggs, I think it would be kind of neat to do. You could just fry an egg real easy. So this one's going to go. Not keeping it. Don't have room for it. I have this one. This is again, this is part of the hex clad, the fry pans that we use. And honestly, we don't use this one and I don't think we're going to keep it. I will talk to my husband again. Put on the screen. If we decided to keep it or not, but we really don't use it. He will kind of a. It's like a walk and he'll make some sort of stir fry and sometimes he uses it. So again, I'll let him make the decision on that one if we keep it. But going through, just going through and making sure that you ask yourself, have you used it? I think that's a great indicator on whether you need it or not. And for us, because we're downsizing so much, we just need to pick the best of what we need and let the rest of them go. I have so many pots here and we rarely use them. So going to go through that. So this again is kind of like, this is a really nice pan. Good quality. I don't think I'm going to keep this one, actually. Maybe I'll keep this one and I'll get rid of this one. This is another size like this. We definitely do not need both of these. So I'm gonna let this One go, which will probably go to my son. So I'm gonna keep this. Then I have three sizes of these pans, so I have a small one, a medium, and a large one. And I also have another one that's along that lines that I really like. But I think I'm gonna let this one go because it's the same size as this one. I don't need all this redundancy. I think I'm gonna opt to keep the small one and the medium one or the small one and the large one. And I'll give this one to my son again. It'll match his set. And we don't need three pans or three pots this size for just my husband and I and my daughter. So that's gonna go. See, we're working through this quickly. Just got to pull everything out. So these are all keep. Now I have these huge pans that I've had over the years. You know, we've got a big family, and I've used them. So I have all of these. Looking at these. This one matches my set. So I think what I'm going to do, make a decision between this one and this one. I don't need. I don't need both of these. So I'm going to opt to keep the one that matches my set and give this one. Donate it. Give it to my. My. Give it to my son if he wants it. So there's another one that's gonna go. So this is my keep pile. Now, this one is kind of a specialty one. It needs to be, like, cleaned, but basically, you can make things, you know, like large things of mashed potatoes and other things like that. I don't think I need this, to be honest. Maybe if I'm hosting Thanksgiving dinner, which I do occasionally, but I won't be doing that for a while with our house so small. So I think I'm going to let this one go. And I know there's quite a bit that already let go, but like I said, we don't need this. And I'm going to a really small home, so I need to make sure I'm being realistic on what I can keep. This lid. I'm not sure what this lid goes to, so I need to find its match. Now, here's where I'm at. Okay, so here's my keep pile. I have my two traditional pots and pans, so I have those two, and I have the large one. I have my three fry pans. We use these. We use them all the time. I definitely Want those? I'll assume we're keeping the large wok, but maybe I'll get rid of it. I'm assuming we're keeping the large cast iron, and then I have this one I'm going to keep. But you know what? This is still kind of a maybe, but I'm going to take it with us. I think this is a good amount of, you know, inventory to have for us, for my husband and I and our daughter. And then, you know, we do entertain sometimes. So I think this is good. This is my to go pile. It is huge. So again, I'm going to give some of this to my son and anything he doesn't want, I'll donate. But this is amazing. He doesn't have to buy anything new and I'm not carrying around and keeping a bunch of stuff that we just don't need. Going through this process is so great because, you know, you don't want to keep stuff you don't need. We keep our cupboards and everything. You know, we as a society keep our cupboards filled to the brim. We want to keep things because we feel guilty, and in the end, really getting rid of stuff and letting someone else make use of the things that we're not using. How many pots and pans can I actually use? Is actually adding value and it simplifies my life and it makes things easier because you don't have as much stored inside your cupboards and you're not having things falling over and everything so it can stay more organized. So this is awesome. I think this is going work really well. So I think for pots and pans, I'm done, and now I'm going to move on to another part of the kitchen. I hope you can see how easy it can be to work on decluttering, simplifying, and organizing your stuff if you just take it, you know, section by section, item by item, and don't overwhelm yourself. But I find that, you know, like in the example of the pots and pans, pulling them all out, looking at them all together, right? Make sure your dishes are done and clean, but looking at them together, you can easily see where there's redundancy, maybe some that you know are chipped or scratched or ruined, and you don't want to keep them because you don't want to have stuff flaking off into your food anyhow. It's easy for me to easily grab the ones I wanted to keep. You know, you generally will have emotions on which ones you really like, which ones you love, which ones you use, and you'll look and see. You know what, Even though something may be a nice quality item, you just don't use it. So giving it to someone else and allowing someone else to use it is the best thing you can do. So I'm super excited. I've got through my pots and pans, and I feel really good about that. So now what I'm moving on to is another set of cupboard that I have down here that kind of has more miscellaneous items in it. And I can tell you already, there's items I don't want to take with me and I don't want to keep when I move. So the first one is a. The first one is this mandala. I. I think it's a great idea, and I love the idea of it, but I never use it. And I'm gonna let somebody else else use this and take their life in their hands when they try cleaning it. Because I hate cleaning this. It scares me half the time. So this is definitely going into my donate pile. And I do have this one I like. It's just a smaller kind of version of it. I think I'll keep this one. It's a chop wizard and it has attachments. I don't see all the attachments with it, so I'll need to see if I have them. But this one I think I'm gonna be a maybe on and probably keep because it's nice and handy. Another thing I have in here are, is my hand mixer, which we are going to take with us. And we have a rolling pin. And I don't bake, so we don't use this much. But I'm not going to get rid of it. That's something I think we want to keep. I have some random things. Let me grab them real quick. Okay, so here's some kind of random stuff. This, I believe, goes to an instant pot. I'm not sure if we have. I'm going to set that aside because we have a couple. We have two that we're going gifting to us, and we don't really use even one of them. So I'm not even sure I'm going to keep an instant pot at this point, but I'll deal with that later. So I have two Pyrex dishes. There was actually three, but one shattered. So we have an extra lid. So I don't think I'm going to keep this lid. I'm going to get rid of this lid. And this is something that'll just go in the trash. There's nothing we can really do with that. So I have two lids and two glass Pyrex dishes. I definitely want to keep these. We use these. So that will keep. This is handy. This is for carrying and keeping like your, your cupcakes. And I don't see the right size pan. I will keep this. So I need to make sure I have the right pan for it. And I have a cupcake pan here. These we use all the time. These are our mixing bowls. I love these. You know, if you're looking to try to minimize space in your kitchen having something that nests, there is a third one. My daughter probably has it. We use them for popcorn or just making, you know, mixing things. So basically have all three of them sit together and they sit on top of the lids. Keeping those. That's definitely something we use. This is a. This is actually a Rachel Ray and it's just a. A dish that we use. Definitely. I'm going to keep it. I love purple. Can you tell? So I'm going to keep that. That's definitely something I want to move with. Oh, this is fun. So I have three butt pans. Not one, not two, but I have three. And we very rarely use them. I would say we've been here for a couple years. I maybe have used this one once, maybe twice. So I'm definitely gonna get rid of these. I'm gonna keep this one and these two will be leaking, so that was easy. This is just a glass plate that we don't really use. But you know, it's kind of nice for serving things. So I might keep that one for special holidays. Okay. This is something we recently bought. So I will be keeping this. This is a piece of like a pie pan for the oven. I have a salad set. I probably will keep that. I have this. These are so cute. This is a mini bunt pan and my mom gave this to me and it's cute. She'll. She had a couple of these, but she'll make little things just for herself cuz she lives by herself. But we never use it. And you know what? I need to scale, I need to simplify. And this, this is going to have to go. Go. So this is going in my to go pile. Good. Okay. So I found another. I found another salad bowl actually. I like it better and it matches these. So I'm gonna let this one go. So this will stay. I found the other part to my chop wizard, so that's good. And I found this. I have no idea what it's for. I don't think I'm gonna keep it. Yeah, I don't know what it's for. So this is actually gonna go. So there we go. I went through two cupboards got, I got everything out and now I get to just put back what I'm keeping and I'm going to take all of this and donate it. So I hope this inspires you to go through some of your kitchen stuff and make sure and subscribe and come back. This is going to be a two month journey of simplifying, downsizing, organizing and moving. So it's going to be a, an awesome experience. I know it's going to be exhausting but I hope to really, you know, help. I get a lot of questions, you know, as a professional organizer I get a lot of questions on how to do a lot of this stuff. So I'm putting myself through the paces and you can come along with me. So subscribe and I'll see you next time. Bye Sam.