When downsizing make a list of the items you want to give away. Send each of your children a copy of the list, ask them to put their name next to the items they want, and to send the list back. If you do not have children to send the list to, send it to nieces or nephews or grandchildren. Then decide who gets what.

If you do not have anyone in your family that you want to send the list to, you may want to consider making a profit to help pay for your new place or improve your lifestyle. Perhaps you want to hire someone to run an estate sale or take items to a consignment shop.

Determining what stays and what goes can be challenging especially if your you are moving from a 2,500 square foot house to a 1,000 foot place or even a smaller place at an assisted living facility. Creating a floor plan for your new place, measuring room sizes, and making notes of where outlets are and the number of closets will help determine what will be coming with you.

Are you going to have your own kitchen? Will it be equipped with just a microwave or will you being eating in a common area?

Simple cutouts made to scale can help you visualize where things will fit.

Using a 1-2-3 system can be implemented to designate what you are taking with you, what you are selling, and what you are giving away. Items tagged with No. 1 will go with you, items tagged with No. 2 will be sold, items tagged with No. 3 will be given away. When you are actually packing to move use colored sticky dots to designate what room items will go to. For example, items with blue sticky dots go to the master bedroom, yellow sticky dots go to the kitchen and so on.

In order to fully understand how much kitchen cabinet space you have tape off all of the cabinets except for the number of cabinets at your new place. So if you currently have 14 cabinets and your new place has 4 cabinets – tape off ten cabinets. Everything you plan to take should fit in the four cabinets.

Finally, many people have one or two pieces of furniture that are a part of their past, make sure you include those pieces in the floor plan.