My Downsizing Story – (You won’t want to do this!)

A lot of people ask me why I choose to focus on downsizing. 

And the answer is, I know how difficult it downsizing is, and how important it is to do it right, because I have been through the downsizing process myself. And in many ways, my downsizing story is a warning story of what not to do. The first time I downsized I took the task for granted, did a terrible job and it caused me a huge amount of stress and anxiety. 

Back in 2015, I was living in Kingston with my (now) wife. That summer, my business partner and I brokered the sale of a company to investors from Europe, and as part of the deal, they wanted my partner and I to move to Toronto to run the company for at least a year. While my wife and I loved our life in Kingston, this was a big opportunity for my business partner and I, so my wife and I decided to pack up our apartment in Kingston over a relatively short period of time, and head down the 401 to our new life in a trendy little condo on Queen Street in Toronto.

There was just one problem – we didn’t really have a lot of money at the time so our new condo was only 550 square feet. 

That’s what you can afford when you are shopping in Toronto on a Kingston budget. 

We knew it was going to be a squeeze, but we really procrastinated on downsizing and organizing before the move. We sold some large pieces of furniture that we knew wouldn’t fit, but we didn’t have any plan for what to do with the large volume of “stuff” – like clothes and books and odds and ends, that we weren’t quite ready to part with.

So we boxed it up and just brought it to Toronto, thinking we would deal with it there.

Bad Idea.

The first two months were a disaster. We had 900 square feet worth of stuff packed into a 550 square foot apartment. Boxes stacked shoulder height in our tiny hallways, threatening to fall on us. Boxes on the beds, boxes on the couch, boxes on the kitchen table. And no plan at all for where to put it.

Oh yeah, and my business partner was sleeping on our couch for the first few weeks as well.

I had lived in small spaces before and didn’t think I would mind it, but a small, cluttered, messy space was too much for me. And that stress, combined with the stress of running the business with the new bosses from Europe, started to eat at me. 

I wasn’t sleeping. I wasn’t eating well. I wasn’t happy. I couldn’t relax because I couldn’t feel comfortable in my home. 

And the apartment just got messier and more cluttered. 

And that’s when we reached out for help. 

It was my wife’s idea at first to hire a professional organizer (thank God for my wife’s good sense!).  At first, I thought the idea was crazy. A personal organizer? Why not hire someone to tie my shoelaces for me or make me breakfast too? Maybe I could hire a personal hair-comber. After all, I still have two legs and two arms that work just fine, and it seemed like organizing was something simple enough that we should be able to do it ourselves. But we were desperate, and our house wasn’t organizing itself, so we hired her. 

And she changed everything. 

In two days, her and her team went through all our belongings, and didn’t just organize them, but she created systems that helped us stay organized for years after her consult. The boxes quickly disappeared, replaced by shelves and bins, all neatly organized and with everything visible. Personal items were arranged by type and then sorted into three categories – donate, store, and dispose. It turned out that a huge portion of the “stuff” we had was superfluous – we could get rid of half of it and still have the same quality of life. 

After two days with Rachel, we had “moved in” better than we had in two months of living in our new condo. No more boxes on the bed, no more boxes on the kitchen table. We had space to breathe. It was still a tiny condo, but it was our condo, and we could live and sleep and relax in it, and of course spend plenty of time out in the city doing the things we loved. 

A few years later, we moved again. This time to a *slightly* larger place in The Beaches (on the east side of Toronto). But this time we planned ahead. We called Rachel beforehand, and had her team help us with the moving process. When we arrived at our new place, her team jumped into action and got started unpacking and organizing us right away at 10 am when the moving truck arrived. They were so effective that by 5:30 pm, my wife and I were sitting at our kitchen table, in our fully moved-in apartment, everything nearly organized, and we realized we had nothing to do. 

So we called our friends, and invited them over for dinner at our new home. At 5:30 pm, on our moving day!

For the first time in my life, moving was something I didn’t dread. It was easy. I was a manager, not a pack mule, and I was able to organize and plan my space in a way that worked for me without the hassle of having to go through every single item myself. It was a miracle. 

Sadly, Rachel still lives in Toronto, and I couldn’t bring her with me when I moved to Ottawa with my family during the pandemic. But my mission here in Ottawa has been to create a team that is able to do for my clients what Rachel was able to do for my family back in Toronto. That’s why I’m creating a network of the best organizers, movers, cleaners and declutterers in Ottawa to help regular people just like you who are thinking of downsizing to get downsized to an affordable dream life in as little as 90 days – and without dealing with the dreadful task of doing everything yourself! 

If you are interested in downsizing quickly, click here to book a free downsizing consultation where we can work together to create  a plan to get you into a new downsized lifestyle in as little as 90 days – or whatever timeframe works for you.

Best,

Chris

P.s. If you are in Toronto and interested in working with Rachel, you can find her professional organizing company here. Tell her Chris Hendricks from Ottawa sent you.