Down-sizing, Fun-sizing and Living in the Present Moment

Downsizing is like unlocking your freedom-pass to your current life. It's all about making room for the good stuff in life, like adventures and travel. Bigger homes? More work, always. And hey, stashing things in basements? Totally normal—human nature at its finest. Now, let's chat about those routines. Do you really want to keep lugging bins around for holidays or swapping out plates with the seasons? Time for a lifestyle check! Figuring out your habits is key, shaping your home around who you are right now because, let's be real, that's all we got.

Are you or your aging parent exhausted by the constant project management of owning a larger or older home? Does the overwhelming spring cleaning feel like it takes all four seasons? The thought of packing moving boxes for your next move might make you curl into a fetal position and suck your thumb (asking for a friend). If so, fear not. It might just be time to call a Certified Professional Organizer and Senior Move Manager.

 Emily had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Jill Yesko, founder and CEO of Discover Organizing, the largest and most trusted organizing firm in the Pittsburgh area, about these topics and more.

From Jill: "I started this business in my 30s to help people get organized and live a simpler life. I watched kids in their 30s, my age at the time, help their parents downsize. As I worked with people in my 40s, certain things started to click. It wasn’t until I downsized myself after getting married and moving into the city that leaving the home where I raised my children became a challenge. I didn't care about the brick and mortar, the hardwood floors, or the new bathroom. I cared about leaving behind the memories with my children. Packing and decluttering about 80% of my stuff took me three days. When I got to the basement and had to deal with memorabilia, I had a hard stop—Mary's first things, Nathan's first things, framed pictures I intended to scan—all my good intentions were still in the basement.

Take me - I'm about to become a grandmother. All the nostalgia from when Mary was a baby makes me wonder if I shouldn't have gotten rid of it all or saved that baby blanket.

Look at your good intentions and know they were good. They are still there. But can we look at the rest of your life instead of looking backward? We look backward with guilt, regrets, good or bad memories. When we look forward, we can't see the future clearly, but we CAN see the present…

Decluttering Your Good Intentions

As Jill and her team gear up for the decluttering journey, they collaborate closely with clients to dive into their life goals. Picture it like a heart-to-heart session, not just a regular closet makeover chat. Jill guides the conversation towards formulating a customized plan that they then refine together. There is such a prevalence of overwhelm in downsizing and organizing, regardless of home size or location, and Jill and her team are pros in identifying areas for improvement. When there's a bit of chaos, they employ the Clutter Quality of Life Scale, from Institute for Challenging Disorganization, it's like a life satisfaction yardstick. This nifty tool helps them pinpoint exactly where they need a hand, so they can fine-tune the plan to match their unique dreams and wishes.

"As professional organizers, we have to guide your decisions, not to make them for you. We guide you into this thought process so when we're not in the room, you remember my voice and think, “Is this who I am right now? Is this who I really want to be?” Managing, cleaning, and maintaining possessions require effort, and if given the choice, most would prefer anything else.  If we can build our homes and our lives around who we are NOW versus the stuff, then our lives become simpler. If we could just all take a pause before we downsize and really design that life, then all of those other things that we have collected around us start to kind of become less important."

Most people are waiting for these moments to come and that's why they hold on to these things  because they think: what if they need it for THIS moment to make the moment even BETTER? They're forgetting that right now they have too much stuff to manage to be HAPPY. They create this environment of THINGS, instead of an environment that speaks to their lifestyle NOW, not who they thought they could be someday. I see so many good intentions laying all around people's houses. 

Our team can make significant progress with three-hour sessions every two weeks. After four or five sessions, we gather enough items for donation runs or designate a spot in the home for accumulating things to be removed. Even if it's just a little at a time, we load it into our cars and promptly drop it off. The challenge is getting ahead of the clutter, but we can achieve it in three months, or even quicker if needed. Procrastination leads to stress and, often, storage expenses.

"Waiting until the last minute is expensive. It's expensive to your heart, it's expensive for your budget."

Hear more from Emily's conversation with Jill in a future post. Stay tuned!