In Phase 1: Understanding Your Stuff, we discussed how to discern the difference between items that we loved and items we just had lying around. In Phase 2, we are going to talk about how I pared down the items that I felt I had no use for in our tiny home.

Remember, this is just a technique that I felt worked very well for me. You may find another way that suits you better and that is just fine.

My recommendation for downsizing is thus: create a space that you can deposit items you don’t use and therefore start a garage sale pile. I designated our 2nd story loft for my such space. We haven’t used our 2nd story for a while now (more on that later) and it created the perfect zone to accumulate the stuff I wanted to sell.

I would then break up the house into rooms, then divide the rooms into zones. For example, our bedroom has three zones; our clothes dresser, the closet and our daughters book box. These are the areas for us that easily accumulate outgrown clothes, old books and unused toys.

Taking my time, I would slowly go through each zone and weed out the items that I wasn’t too fond of or stuff that we had outgrown. The key is to go slowly. You don’t want to become overwhelmed, which is VERY easy to do. I find that purging your material junk is easiest to manage if you start this months in advance. This definitely isn’t the time to procrastinate!

Sifting through years of acquired stuff takes a lot of time. Personally, I am constantly having to go through boxes that I thought I had taken care of, only to find out that I don’t need three strainers or 5 sets of bed sheets. Go slow and after you’re done, enjoy the feeling of a lighter laundry load or finally being able to whip through the dishes in 5 minutes. You deserve it!