The average house has around 300,000 items, according to downsizing professionals. No one knows whether that number is true. As my wife Liz and I grapple with downsizing our oversized, suburban New Jersey house for an eventual move to the three-bedroom Los Angeles condo we bought near our adult sons and grandkids, I’d say the number doesn’t seem far off.
Liz and I are among the roughly 25% of migrating boomers planning to downsize. We want to move for the same reasons most people over 60 do, according to the National Association of Realtors — a desire for a smaller home and to live closer to family and friends. People are often living longer these days, and the years after leaving a full-time job can last for decades.
So the need to find a suitable, livable place for this next stage of life is significant. Most older Americans want to age in place, according to many surveys, and the notion of lowering their housing expenses while doing so is very attractive. University of Miami President and CEO on the Future of College Sports Play video: University of Miami President and CEO on the Future of College Sports But downsizing means rescuing yourself from being a “prisoner of your possessions,” as Ciji Ware writes in her new book, “Rightsizing Over 70.” Ware, a novelist, wrote the book because she and her husband, journalist Tony Cook, “did everything wrong” in downsizing their homes six times in 10 years.
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Like many others, the couple struggled with the three big downsizing obstacles: overwhelmingness, avoidance and procrastination. Shelby Van Meter and her husband, Peter, experienced just that. In May 2025, the couple moved out of their 2,200-square-foot house,complete with a basement and garage, in Sausalito, Calif., and into a 1,390-square-foot, two-bedroom apartment in a retirement community about 10 miles away.
Their painstaking downsizing process took about five months. He kept boxes and boxes of old files going way back,” Shelby said. During the Van Meters’ downsizing, junk haulers they hired took away Peter’s big pile.
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