Downsizing from six to two bedrooms - how we did it!

First published in stuff.co.nz

Over 44 years together, Rosemary and Earle Dodd have developed a love of auctions and collecting books, furniture and furnishings … but then it came time to downsize. Joanna Davis reports on how they did it.

In Rosemary and Earle Dodd’s last home - three-storey, six bedrooms and over 300m² - they had a walk-in storage cupboard full of extra bowls, special occasion dishes, piles of towels, sheets, blankets and duvet covers.

In their new downsized home, they have what Rosemary describes as a “little tiny cupboard in the hall” that holds one change of sheets, a change of towels, and not too much else.

The Dodds, who’ve been married for 44 years, downsized in a big way when they moved into their two-bedroom villa at Hibiscus Coast Retirement Village, but they still have the things that matter to them, including four bookcases full of books, and a William IV chair they inherited and brought over from England taking pride of place in the living room.

Rosemary, 76, says the walk-in cupboard at her former home was “chock full of stuff”, but she doesn’t miss having it all around her.

When they moved four years ago, they used “multiple routes to get rid of things”, Earle, 79, says.

“Some of the better value items, we sent to auction houses,“ he says, for example a Persian rug they bought while in the UK when a hotel in Scotland closed down. He says they received about $3000 ”for a lot of stuff“.

They sold some things on Trade Me, and gave many - bookshelves, sideboards, chairs - to their daughter who lives near Stratford, Taranaki, the only one of their five children who is still in New Zealand.

The retirement village helped them immensely by allowing them to use a spare garage for storage while they sorted through everything.

“We still had furniture and bits of pieces up there for six months,” Rosemary says. “That enabled us to slowly make decisions about where we would put things and what we really wanted.”

Rosemary says that with five children, it was inevitable that they would accumulate possessions.

“A lot of families do. We had kids that had left home, came back and brought stuff with them. We had stuff left behind several times by the kids.”

They also spent 10 years living in Hertfordshire, England after their children left home. There, they developed an interest in attending auctions, including a local one in an old cattleyard, where they could look at outdoor furniture, garden tools, general furniture, artworks, “bric-a-brac”, and “then finally more upmarket, antique stuff.”

Earle says the bric-a-brac was fun, “because you could go through the box and if you found one little thing you could buy the box for £5”.

They could buy things that were 100 or more years old for relatively cheaply.

“Quite a few bits and pieces were bought with the intention of selling them,“ Rosemary says, ”and then we’d say we’d rather keep it.

“We did come back with a lot of stuff.”

They also inherited Rosemary’s uncle’s belongings a couple of years after they returned from the UK.

“His whole house of furniture went to me and my siblings,” she says. The William IV chair is one of those things that they have kept.

Both keen readers, they still have their bookshelves, two in the lounge and two in the garage. They have boxes of blankets, wrapping paper, hoses and such stored in the loft.

“There’s stuff up there I’d get rid of,” Earle says. “But we’re both fairly critical of what we’ve got. If we go overseas, we don’t buy a souvenir with Brisbane on it, we buy something that reminds us of Brisbane.”

Neither has any regrets about downsizing, and if they have a yearning to see some of the beautiful pieces they’ve treasured over the decades, they still have the chance.

“Our daughter in Taranaki, [age 53] when we walk into her house it’s sort of like walking into our house,” Rosemary says. “Most of the furniture she has was once in our house.”

Liz Bradley, known as The Tidy Lady, often helps and supports people who can’t downsize on their own - a job she says many struggle with.

“There’s an overwhelming amount of work to do when you’re downsizing, and sometimes overwhelming feelings too. [...] Even when you’re happy to be moving, you can feel a lot of emotions.”

She says the things people find hardest to let go of are often associated with nurturing they’ve done in the past, so for example “extra linen, blankets, all the baby blankets, cot sheets, pillows ...” or garden and maintenance tools that have been used to help family members.

Sometimes people think they will pass those things down to their children or grandchildren, but they are in most cases not appropriate or wanted, she says. Even with furniture, people have memories and feelings attached.

“If you can remember your first baby sitting in her highchair chucking porridge around, it can be hard to let it go.”

Bradley has done her own downsizing, moving from a three-bedroom home with “two whole wardrobes to myself” to an apartment with a “tiny 1m wardrobe”.

She says clothes were the most difficult things for her to rationalise, and she did it in three waves. The first was easy - things that didn’t suit her anyway - and the next two waves were slower going.

She says all her clients are different in what they treasure and find hard to let go of, “but I never influence them”.

“You want them to be happy at the end of the process.”