Downsizing from a Townhouse on Hilton Head Island to an Apartment in Chicago

During 2008 many Hilton Head Island business owners were in a downward spiral with the economy bottoming out. In a town that thrives from its tourist trade was hit hard by the lack of business. Businesses that were used to receiving an influx of thousands of people during the Spring, Summer, and early Fall months were being affected in the worst of ways. Small family run businesses were taking the worst hits since there were no corporate backers to help the failing businesses.

With economy in such a terrible position our small, family run 24hour health club could no longer survive the lack of business. Our clients were based on regulars that lived on the island but when the economy changed negatively the regulars began to disappear. Attending a high end facility is a privilege and not a necessity and regular clients were becoming sparse. Suddenly, clients whom we had for years were no longer able to come in for personal training or monthly memberships and as business owners my husband and I had to make some changes. It was in our childrens' and our best interest to close shop after eleven years. My husband entered the corporate world and we began downsizing our lives when we moved.

Furniture

One of the biggest changes for us was reducing the amount of furniture we owned. Several of our over-sized pieces such as dressers and chest of drawers were sold to increase space in our new apartment. We also changed the size of our childrens' twin beds in order to increase space. We purchased a full size bunk bed that would allow the kids to share the room with larger beds for each.

Hidden Spaces

Since our apartment is much smaller we had excess blankets and housewares that we needed to keep but didn't have traditional storage space. Of course, we used the area under our bed but were also able to store items such as suitcases and large paintings behind the headboard of our sleigh bed. Due to the style of our bed it could conceal a large quantity of items and reduce the clutter we would have if that space wasn't available.

We also stored heavy blankets and out-of-season clothes in bins and stored them in the corner of our kid's room. By re-arranging the bunk beds and the chest of drawers we were able to store these items and minimize the clutter.

Housewares and lawn equipment

Since I love to cook and my husband is a gadget junky we had an a kitchen full of items we didn't use. Instead of packing those for the move to Chicago we put those items on eBay and sold them. What we couldn't sell on eBay we sold in a yard sale along with slew of yard equipment. The yard equipment was given to my husband from his mother and since we were moving into an apartment without a yard.

Electronics

With our smaller accommodations we realized we didn't need a TV in our bedroom and the living room. There were other pieces of electronics such as stereo equipment and multiple pieces of smaller desk electronics that we never used and had no plans to use so we also sold those.

New Purchases

After we rid our house of all of these extra items we have not done anything to replace them. In fact; many of these items were just wastes of money and space in our other home. We learned that we didn't need them and we don't miss them.