Your Furniture and Planning Your New Space
Let’s say you’ve lived in the Tri-Lakes area of 20 years and now it’s time to downsize, perhaps to a condo in the Northgate area. In Phase One, we talked about downsizing, or minimalizing, your belongings in preparation for moving from a larger home to a smaller one. Now that you have achieved the daunting task of tossing, selling and giving away those items you no longer really need, it’s time to take a look at your furniture with your new digs in mind.
This second phase can actually be kind of fun as it will give you quite a bit of insight before your belongings are moved to your new place. So let’s get started!
- Measure your furniture. Pick out your favorite furniture pieces that will fit best in your new home. Measure and record each piece that you’ve chosen to take with you.
- Obtain room dimensions of your next home. Request the architectural plans, or if not available, measure each room in your new home.
- Draw the new rooms. Time to become a quasi-architect! Pick up some graph paper from your local office supply or go to www.printfreegraphpaper.com, choose ¼” Cartesian Graph Paper and print out two sheets. Each square = 1’. Draw each room (using the room dimensions you’ve obtained) on the graph paper. On the second sheet of graph paper, draw your furniture pieces based on the dimensions. Cut out each furniture piece.
- Interior Design. Here is where you become a quasi-interior designer! Place your cut-out furniture pieces “in” the rooms you’ve drawn on the paper. With ease, you can visually see where furniture pieces best fit. It’s easy to “rearrange” your furniture this way without moving heavy furniture pieces around or asking others to rearrange it for you. Once you’ve made your final furniture decisions, mark each piece of furniture with a note indicating to which room the piece should go on moving day.
- Strategize. This is a great time to think outside the box. Don’t be afraid to perhaps ditch the dining room and turn it into a den or an office. Think about traffic patterns when arranging your furniture to allow for easy passage. If you have a couple of tall items, like book cases, choose a focal point for the room and place the book cases on either side of that focal point, whether it be a window or a TV, etc. If the master bedroom would be cramped with your king-sized bed, plan to use the queen-sized bed from your current guest bedroom.
- Dispose. Once you’ve determined exactly which furniture you will be keeping based on your “interior design” plan, you are ready to sell or give away the rest.
Hats off, well done!! Now you are ready to move. And, you can positively tell your moving help exactly where to place each piece in your new home. This strategy will eliminate a lot of confusion and stress on an otherwise hectic moving day.