The Benefits of Downsizing Your Home: How to Reduce the Cost of Living with Self Storage

It’s no secret. 

Inflation has tripled the taxes on homes and raised the interest rate on mortgage payments. Vacation homes and the Airbnb market also create a higher demand for rentals, raising rent prices nationwide.

In light of these skyrocketing costs of living, it’s no wonder so many families struggle with high living expenses. Surviving a recessive economy has many of us asking about the benefits of downsizing your home. 

But lessening our square footage by moving into a smaller house without giving away our sentimental and valuable belongings is easier said than done.

This helpful guide covers how to reduce the cost of living by utilizing the benefits of self-storage. We’ll cover how to cut home expenses and how to downsize your home. Then we’ll explain how self-storage can provide extra square footage for a much cheaper price than renting a home with an extra bedroom, shed, or garage.

Finally, we’ll reveal how SelfStorage.com’s signature storage search tool can help you find a storage unit with the features you need close to your home for easy access to your belongings. 

Benefits of Self Storage: Connection Between Storage and Cost Savings

Before we get into the benefits of downsizing your home, let’s examine the benefits of self-storage by establishing a clear connection between using storage and reducing the cost of living. 

For starters, self-storage can help increase your quality of life and your earning capacity by reducing clutter. 

Research shows that cluttered environments impact mental health by increasing the production of stress hormones. Clutter can trigger fight-flight-freeze responses, increase depression and anxiety, and decrease self-esteem and life satisfaction. 

And most important for our purposes here, visual clutter exhausts our cognitive resources. So while downsizing to a smaller home can certainly reduce the cost of living, living in a cluttered space can trigger a vicious cycle. 

• Mental fatigue limits our focus and memory capacities. 
• This results in avoidant behaviors and an increase in consumption habits that limit our problem-solving potential and our earning capacities. 
• A storage unit motivates us to declutter our living space, before and after we downsize. This results in breaking the consumption and material attachment cycles that cost so many of us money.
• Decluttering our house by tossing and donating anything we don’t need and keeping things like seasonal gear, holiday decorations, patio furniture, sports equipment, and sentimental items or collectibles in self-storage can help us become a healthier, more focused, and less stressed version of ourselves who can envision and create solutions.  

And besides the physical and mental space, the benefits of self-storage units include financial savings. For starters, you’ve set into motion what we call the storage-downsizing-savings cycle.

What Is Storage-Downsizing-Savings Cycle?

1. We donate and throw away anything we don’t need, and put things you don’t use but want to keep in our self-storage unit.
2. You downsize to a smaller living space, which ultimately reduces your cost of living. 
3. Living in a clutter-free space empowers us in ways that resolve our dependence on material possessions, inspiring us to go through our storage unit and sell valuables and sentimental items we no longer need, making a profit. 
4. With the quantity of items we have in storage reduced, we can now downsize our storage unit to a smaller, more affordable unit, lowering our monthly expenses even more. 

Now that we understand the benefits of self-storage unit support, let’s take a closer look at how to reduce the cost of living by reaping the benefits of downsizing your home. 

Benefits of Downsizing Your Home with Storage Support 

Those of us accustomed to living in our current home size have spent a lifetime accumulating belongings to furnish and feel comfortable in our living space. 

But with the rising cost of living, downsizing our home size or getting rid of material possessions to reduce our cost of living can both seem like unachievable tasks.

But in addition to the reduced emotional stress and the extra living space, the benefits of downsizing your home with storage support include an immediate cut in home expenses and a long-term reduction in monthly spending. 

How To Cut Home Expenses Immediately with Self-Storage

Downsizing to a smaller house or apartment can save between $500-$1000+ per month, depending on location. A decent-sized storage unit with necessary features runs around $100-$150 a month.

So you’re looking at saving between $400 and $100 a month by downsizing your home. And once you settle into your smaller living space and start downsizing your storage unit, you’re paying even less in storage rent. 

And when you move from a large unit size to a smaller unit, or if you need to upgrade to a larger unit to empty your home even more, you don’t have to pay any moving expenses. And after your home-buying journey, there are investments you can make with those savings to actually make money:

• Sell your current home and use the money to pay cash for a smaller home, put down at least 20% down, and get a 15-year fixed-rate mortgage plan. 
• Use the money you’re saving each month by downsizing to pay your monthly mortgage fee. 
• If you also downsize your storage unit, add the storage rent savings to your monthly mortgage payment. 
• Use an online mortgage payoff calculator tool to see how long it’ll be before the new house is paid off. 
• We suggest talking to a financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

In addition to saving big on rent and mortgage payments, downsizing also immediately lowers your utility bill. The less square footage you need to heat or cool, the less energy you use, and the lower your utility bills will be. 

In fact, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Residential Energy Consumption Survey, conducted in 2020, found that 52% of a household’s yearly energy usage goes toward two things: space heating and cooling.

You can bankroll your utility savings into your rent or mortgage payments as well. Or you can into a new hobby or business venture that will keep you busy, prevent you from spending money elsewhere by keeping you busy, and may even make a profit down the road. 

Last but not least, downsizing your home will immediately reduce your property taxes. 

• The value of your home is typically the basis for your property tax rates.
• Smaller houses are less expensive, meaning they have a lower value. 
• Downsizing to a smaller home can reduce your property taxes by the percentage of the decrease in home value. 

And that’s not the mention that if you use your storage unit for business storage, you can write off your storage rent on your taxes as a business expense. 

The Long-Term Financial Benefits of Self Storage

Selling your home and using self storage to downsize also comes with long-term financial flexibility and a decrease in homeowner expenses. For starters, your homeowners or renters’ insurance premiums will drop along with your home value, which, as we mentioned, is based on your square footage. 

Conversely, HOA fees aren’t typically tied to the house size. That said, if downsizing your home also means moving to a community with fewer amenities like neighborhood parks, pools, or gyms, or moving to an older house, your HOA fees will go down as well. 

And if you make a point to keep all your rare antiques and high-value collectibles in your storage unit with enhanced security features like 24-hour surveillance cameras or on-site security, those insurance premiums can drop even more.

Another long-term downsizing cost reduction self-storage can help support is a decrease in maintenance expenses. From spring cleaning to DIY home repairs, a smaller house takes less time, energy, and resources to maintain year-round.

How Self Storage Makes Downsizing Possible

Self-storage can support downsizing your home in a number of ways. First, it allows to to clear out sentimental or valuable possessions you may not use on a regular basis that are taking up space in your home without having to get rid of anything. 

It also gives you a place to keep seasonal gear such as skis, rock climbing, mountain biking, and hunting gear. For example, you can keep your mountain bike gear at home and your skis in storage for the summer. 

When winter rolls around, swap your bike gear for your ski gear, and you only need to store one pile of gear at home at a time without giving up any of your hobbies.

One of the hang-ups downsizers get stuck on is what furniture to keep and what furniture to get rid of once they lose a room or two worth of space. A storage unit allows you to create a furniture rotation schedule so you can still use all your furniture. 

• Maybe one dresser matches your winter decorations more than your spring decorations.
• Perhaps there’s a worn vintage dresser you never use but keep in the guest room because it was your grandparents.
• Or maybe that velvet couch is a bit warm for the summer, but perfect for the winter. 
• Self-storage lets you play around with a furniture rotation, so you can free up your valuable space without choosing. 

And if down the road you find yourself using the same piece of furniture year-round and not wanting to rotate it out, you can always downsize your storage unit and save some rent money there.

How to Downsize Your Home Successfully 

Now that you understand the benefits of self-storage, it’s time to review the step-by-step process of how to downsize your home. We’ll start with the assessment process and move into the step-by-step downsizing procedure. Then, we’ll talk about how to choose the right storage unit. 

Pre-Downsizing Assessment

Before exploring how to reduce the cost of living by downsizing, you’ll have to assess your living situation and start planning. We’ve already talked a bit about calculating your potential savings from moving into a smaller house and taking on a more minimalist lifestyle. 

That said, the specific numbers vary from region to region. You’ll have to crunch your particular numbers to be sure exactly how much you’ll save and whether or not it’s worth it. 

Next on the docket, we suggest taking an inventory of all your current possessions. Go room by room and list everything in there. Write down the dimensions of the furniture, as that’ll help you decide what size unit you need later on. 

As you take your inventory, keep three different color highlighters with you. 

1. Highlight any items you’re unattached to that can be donated in one color.
2. Anything broken you can throw away with another. 
3. Any item on your list that you don’t use often but want to keep in storage can be highlighted in the third color. 

Now let’s get into the step-by-step downsizing process. 

How To Downsize Your Home: The Step-by-Step Process

First, let’s convert the high-level strategy. Then we’ll get into the room-by-room decluttering checklist. 

Our first piece of advice is to declutter one room at a time rather than attempting to organize the entire house. If you’ve busted out the highlighters, you’ve already broken ground on the primary decluttering strategy. 

You’ll be going through all your belongings, room by room, and looking for things you don’t use regularly. You’ll separate these goods into three piles: donate, trash, and storage unit. Anything you do use, you’ll prep for moving to the new, smaller house. 

It’s good to get your whole family involved, both so you’re not making all the calls on your own and so you can all adjust to the new minimalist lifestyle together. This also lets you divide the tasks into smaller, more manageable subtasks so you and your family can split up the workload.

Room-by-Room Downsizing Breakdown

Choosing the Right Storage Solutions for Downsizing Your Home

There are three primary considerations when choosing the right storage unit for downsizing. You want a unit with the right storage features and a facility in an ideal location. 

You also want to find a unit that’s big enough to hold all the belongings that won’t fit in your house with a little room to grow and conduct maintenance, but not so big that you’re paying for space you don’t use. 

Features

When it comes to the storage unit features you want, we suggest taking that handy list of highlighted items you plan to store and deciding what the ideal storage environment would be. 

When downsizing your home, you’re likely planning to store vulnerable items like wooden furniture and collectibles like comic books and baseball cards. 

Since all of these valuables could get destroyed by fluctuating temperatures and high moisture and humidity levels, you probably want a climate-controlled storage unit. 

If you’re storing expensive and irreplaceable items like antiques or jewelry, security cameras, and on-site managers and security personnel are high on your list of priorities.  Or if you’re storing your night fishing gear or early morning hiking equipment, 24/7 access to your storage unit might be a solid move. 

In terms of facility location, it’s all about what you’re storing. If you’re storing extra wardrobe accessories, dress shoes, and the bicycle you ride every weekend, for example, you’ll probably want to find a storage facility near your new home. 

But if you’re only storing the weed eater you use once a month and Christmas lights you use once a year, your storage facility location is less critical to your convenience.

Finally, there’s the storage unit size to consider. A 5×5 is the size of a walk-in closet. A 5×10-sized storage unit is as wide as a walk-in closet but 10 feet deep. 

If you’re downsizing by a single bedroom, but your living spaces are close to the same size, a 5×10 might do the trick. Think mattress set, small furniture, and a few boxes.

A 10×10 can hold the contents of two full bedrooms, including larger items like a couch, a few bed frames, and other furniture, plus a shelf full of storage containers. 10×10 is a good unit size for those who have downsized by two bedrooms. 

If you downsized your home that had a garage and need a new place to store recreational vehicles, tools, and machinery, you might need to consider at least a 10×15, if not a 10×20 or 10×25-30.

How To Maximize Storage Unit Space

Once you secure your storage unit, you should have an overhead map of the layout.  If not, just find your unit dimensions on our storage unit size guide. 

You can preplan your layout. We always suggest leaving a middle aisle and organizing your belongings on both sides, against each of the side walls. 

Our favorite storage methods include:

• Breaking down all furniture to save space
• Putting all the furniture against one wall
• Install a steel frame metal wire shelving unit against the opposite wall, utilizing all vertical space up to the ceiling.
• Organizing all smaller items and clothing into clear plastic totes with silica gel packs to absorb moisture
• Labeling each tote based on the contents
• Stacking the totes on the shelf with the most frequently accessed stuff at arm level and the least frequently accessed containers on the top shelf.
• Hang a step stool on the side of the metal shelves using an S-hook
• Take an inventory of all belongings stored in the unit
• Make a diagram of your unit with labels indicating where everything is, including the contents of each storage container
• Label the diagram, put it on a clipboard, and hang it from the metal shelves so you can quickly find what you need 

How to Cut Home Expenses Through Smart Storage Use

Now that you know how to downsize your home by getting rid of things you won’t ever use again and storing things you use seasonally or on special occasions, let’s look at the immediate cuts to our monthly expenses.

Lower Utility Bills

First, there’s the reduced utilities. As we discussed earlier, there’s less space to heat and cool. And since heating and cooling make up more than half of our utility bill, we’re looking at a significant bill reduction.

But it doesn’t stop there. Fewer rooms also mean fewer lights are needed to live or work in the space. With fewer lights to draw electricity, your utility bill is cut down even more. And that’s not to mention the lower water usage. With fewer bathrooms, sinks, and showers, your water bill is sure to be lower in the new space.   

Fewer Maintenance Expenses

A smaller house will naturally contain fewer appliances. For example, you may go from a standalone washer and dryer to a combo stack. You’ve got a lower number of showers, toilets, dishwashers, and sinks to clean out, maintain, and repair, which means lower monthly expenses. 

The floors in all houses wear out eventually and need to either be deep-cleaned, polished, or repaired. A smaller house means less square footage of floorspace to keep up with. And of course, less square footage means fewer routine cleaning and upkeep tasks. And since time is money in our world, more time is a financial score. 

How to Reduce the Cost of Living Beyond Housing

The benefits of using self-storage to downsize your home don’t stop at the lower monthly bills. There are reduced costs of living that a storage unit can help maintain beyond just your lower housing expenses. Let’s take a look at two important shifts you can look forward to after downsizing with self-storage. 

Transportation Savings

It’s not just our homeowners who can reduce their cost of living by downsizing and putting excess items in storage; it’s renters, too. For example, if you and your family/roommates have always rented a home with a garage in order to store your dirtbikes, camping gear, lawncare equipment, or motorcycles, you can move those items to self-storage and downsize your rental strategy. 

And with your furniture, extra clothes, tools, and collectibles in a storage unit, the cost and timeline moving from one rental to another gets cut down to a fraction of what it’d be if you had to move everything. 

These savings drop the cost of the rental truck, since you can get away with a smaller truck size and make fewer trips, cutting down the mileage fees. And you’ll also save big on gas. 

Shopping and Consumption Habits

As we discussed up front, clutter hurts our mental health. We feel stressed about the clutter, the stress makes us lethargic and avoidant, we consume junk food or buy more stuff we don’t need to distract ourselves from the avoidant feeling, and that adds to the clutter, starting the cycle over and over again, more and more intense each time. 

Using self-storage as a long-term storage option to free up space, keep items organized, and prevent overcrowding in the spaces where you relax also frees up mental space and starts the process of breaking compulsive consumption habits. 

Decluttering, downsizing your house, and putting all the extras in storage is a huge step toward breaking the impulse purchase cycle, redirecting your lifestyle toward meeting those financial goals you may have nearly forgotten about. 

As you start to focus more on experience and self-cultivation and less on accumulation and possessions, you’ll start to realize that the joy you get from experience is far richer than the temporary endorphins that release when you buy something new and shiny. 

The money you save by breaking the compulsive consumption habits we’re all indoctrinated to take up can become a monthly deposit into an emergency fund you can use to cover other housing costs. 

Eventually, as you detach from material possessions, you can start donating or even selling off items in your storage unit as well. This brings you a small income boost and eventually leads to downsizing your storage unit size so you can save even more.

And that takes us into our next section, where we’ll discuss the financial flexibility and scalability that comes with self-storage.  

Benefits of Self Storage for Cost-Conscious Families

Self storage offers cost-conscious families perks beyond just the benefits of downsizing your home, starting with financial flexibility and scalability. 

Benefits of Self Storage: Financial Flexibility and Scalability 

For example, you can adjust your storage size in either direction. Say you acquire a rolling toolbox that you can’t fit into your home, and only need for work. Rather than looking for a house with a bigger garage or buying a weather-proof shed for the back yard, you simply scale your storage unit up to the next size and grab the toolbox when you need it. 

Or maybe there’s a transition happening in your family, like a kid coming home from college with more stuff than he left with, an empty nester combing through family heirlooms at their own pace, or a senior downsizing before they transition into senior living.

1. Scale your storage unit up to the next size
2. Crossload all your belongings from the old unit into the new, larger unit
3. Add your college-aged or senior family members’ belongings into the mix
4. When they’re ready to go back to school or to the senior living setting, you help them move their stuff out and scale your storage unit back down.   

The same goes for rotating seasonal sports gear, clothing, and decorations. 

And the kicker is that you never have to pay movers or rent a moving truck. You simply grab a hand truck or cart from the storage unit and move stuff from the old unit to the new one.

Benefits of Self Storage: Protection and Security

Cost-conscious families likely know that the cost of installing security cameras, electronic gates, and motion sensor lights or hiring on-site security to guard their valuables is an expensive endeavor.  

But moving your valuables into a storage unit at a security facility that is already in place lets you take advantage of high-value security protection at next to no extra cost. 

Plus, storage units often come with insurance coverage up to a certain amount for free, with add-ons available for a little bit extra. Renting a unit with enhanced security can also lower your personal or family homeowner’s or renters’ insurance premiums.

The same goes for installing a humidity monitoring and mitigation system at home– renting a climate-controlled storage unit gives you access to professional temperature and climate control that most of us can’t get at home. 

Real-World Success Stories Showcasing the Benefits of Downsizing Your Home

The benefits of downsizing your home are real, but you don’t have to take our word for it. Here are some real-life stories about extreme downsizers who went all the way down to minihomes, as reported by Nomad Adjacent:

1. Michelle Taylor: Michelle is a divorced mother of three kids. She downsized from a 1800-square-foot home into a 256-square-foot shed from a hardware store. Michelle’s father helped her turn the shed into a three-story, four-bedroom, two-bath home for around $25,000. Now her monthly bills are between $600-$800.
2. Jeremy Collins: Jeremy is a father of three who built a home out of a 320-square-foot shipping container for around $36,700. 

Of course, these builds take time. Self storage allows you to live in a shed, shipping container, trailer, or small a-frame with as little as you need to get you through the day. As your building project expands the size of your home, you can slowly move more and more of your furniture, decorations, clothing, books, etc. Into your growing home. 

As you empty it, you’re also downsizing your storage unit along the way, until the home is finished. 

Cost-Benefit Analysis: Storage vs. Larger Living Space 

As you can see from our breakdowns and from the real-world success stories, using a storage unit to reduce the square footage of your home and your energy footprint all in one swoop is a practical and easily achievable alternative to families who downsize using self storage, and start reaping the financial advantages almost immediately. 

• As we mentioned up front, upgrading to a home with an extra bedroom can cost you $1,000 more a month in rent or mortgage payments, if not more. 
• Renting a decent storage unit with some of the amenities mentioned here in the article instead of upsizing costs between $75 and $150, depending on location, size, and which amenities. 
• This means that using a storage unit instead of upsizing your house can save you $900 a month, plus the moving expenses and security deposits you’d have to pay.
• And that’s not even considering the hundreds of dollars in utility bills, maintenance costs, property taxes, and insurance premiums the upsizing would add to your monthly expenses. 
• And eventually, as you learn to live with less and less and use storage more and more, you can move in the opposite direction and downsize to a smaller house, doubling those monthly savings. 

Getting Started: How SelfStorage.com Can Help Reduce the Cost of Living Using the Benefits of Self-Storage

It’s just about time for us to reveal how SelfStorage can get you started by helping you find the ideal storage unit size with all the amenities you need in your area. Let’s review the process of how to reduce your cost of living by utilizing the benefits of self storage and downsizing your home as we go. 

Assessment Phase:

1. Start by calculating your current living expenses, so you know what you’re spending every month. Be as accurate and thorough as you can.
2. Go through your belongings, room by room, using the process we outlined above. Declutter as you go and look for opportunities to donate, throw away, keep, and move belongings into self-storage.  
3. Use our storage unit guide to figure out the sizes and amenities you need.
4. Then, enter your zip code into our signature SelfStorage.com unit locator tool to find the storage unit size and amenities you decided you need in the previous step. 

Taking the First Steps

5. Our tool uses amenity filters you set to isolate the storage units in your zip code that have precisely what you need. You can contact the storage facility through our site and book your storage unit today. 
6. Once you’ve secured your storage unit, you’re ready to start planning your downsizing timeline. Be realistic, slowly moving the items you didn’t trash or donate out of the house and into storage. Once you have more space than you need, you’ll know how far you can downsize based on how much extra space you have. For example, if the garage and third bedroom are empty, you’re ready to sell the house and buy/rent a two-bedroom with no garage.
   1. If you’re selling the house, you’ll need to get with a realtor in your area to find out how long selling the house will take in the current market.
   2. If you’re renting your current home, you’ll either need to wait until your lease is up to downsize or research how to break your lease without a penalty. 
7. If you rent a storage unit that has more space than you need to downsize your home, you can pack for the move early and stage some of your belongings in your storage unit before the moving deadline. Then, you just move into the new house slowly over the last month in your current home, rather than having to do it all in one day. Once you’re moved, you can downsize to a smaller unit.

Financial Monitoring and Optimization

8. Once you’re settled into your new home, track your monthly finances. See how they compare to the numbers you pulled during Step 1, and find ways to optimize your income and reduce spending. 
9. We suggest conducting a quarterly decluttering session at the start of each season. Take inventory of everything in the unit by pulling everything out one section or bin at a time and sorting the contents into three piles: donate, trash, and keep. The keepers go back into the bin or storage unit section, and the rest gets gone. Eventually, you’ll be able to downsize your storage unit even more. 
10. Chart your financial goals in terms of savings and downsizing, and be sure to celebrate each one when you hit it.

So take your first step toward financial freedom now by searching SelfStorage.com. We’ll browse more than 20,000 storage facilities nationwide to find a cheap storage unit near you. We’ll help you compare prices and unit sizes. 

When you find the ideal storage unit, we’ll reserve it for you for free in minutes. No commitment and no credit card required. 

And remember, downsizing your home to reduce your cost of living isn’t a speed bump in the road of life. On the contrary, learning to live with less is an evolutionary step in your journey of personal growth.