How to Declutter and Prepare to Downsize Your Home in Retirement with Jen Robin
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Hey, everyone. Really quick before we start the show, on episode 43, I interviewed Peter Lazaroff, and I mentioned that I was giving away five signed copies of his book to our listeners. And those five books just flew off the shelves. They were gone within minutes. So I picked up

another shipment and I continue to give them away as people request them. But I wanted to let you know that I have exactly seven copies left. So if you'd like a copy, you enjoyed the interview, just shoot me an email at podcast at you stay wealthy.com. And I'll send out to the first seven listeners that I hear from. All right, onto the show.

The reality of it is there's going to be some hard conversations and there's going to be some differences of values of what some clients of ours, whether it's the husband or wife, just has to keep everything and then it's the opposite for the other one. So we run into it a lot, but it comes down to understanding what their goals and values are.

Welcome to the Stay Wealthy Podcast. I'm your host, Taylor Schulte. And today we're changing gears a little bit. And I'm talking with a professional organizer about how to organize your home and prepare for potentially downsizing in retirement.

Her name is Jen Robin, and she has tons of great tips for getting started, staying organized, steps to take to hire a professional, what to do if one spouse isn't into the process, and some specific solutions for hanging onto those keepsakes without them taking up your entire garage or your attic.

She also shares some really great resources with us, which can all be found on the show notes page, which you can find at youstaywealthy.com forward slash 49. All right, let's get organized.

So I've watched enough Marie Kondo to know that you must run into some pretty interesting situations as a professional organizer. Perhaps they aren't Netflix worthy, but I'd love to know what's your favorite story or experience since you started doing this for a living?

Well, first, thanks for having me so much. My favorite story, and I've told this a few times before, is when I started out probably in the first year of organizing, one of my clients that I did a site visit for had just lost her husband.

And it's a very vulnerable state what we do in coming into people's homes and lives. And I just remember that moment of sitting down with this lady who had just lost her husband. And she had this...

entire room full of his coats. I think about 30 of them we counted and just so much stuff in there that was all his. And she could never walk past that room without breaking down. And she just finally decided enough is enough. And she got a hold of us. And when I sat down with her and I asked her, what are your goals? And for the second life that you have and to make this tragedy into a beautiful moment for her.

She had mentioned to me that she had always wanted to do photography and painting, but she just never got around to it. So I had suggested to her, why don't we make this room? It was a beautiful room, the bones of it. Why don't we make this room into that, a studio for you? And she had never been able to part ways.

with these coats that he had worn on their wedding day when they had the birth of their first child. And so it was this beautiful moment of coming up with solutions for her that she could take with her. And so I suggested that what if we got a beautiful hanger and put all the coats on a white backdrop, took tons of photos, made a wonderful, wonderful book for her so she could never forget the memory, but really...

pick her top three coats that she would want. And so she finally agreed. And we have this incredible book. We had this day of shooting. And then we turned this room into the most incredible photography and painting studio for her. And when we were all done, I remember us both really just crying because we had gotten to know each other over the course of

some time and just saying, thank you for giving me basically another life to live. And I'm not going to forget him and really take this with me. But now she gets to kind of live this next phase without him, but have these beautiful memories. So for me, that is and was my favorite memory because I keep in touch with her still. And she still talks about this book to her friends and she's painting and shooting photography. And it's just

such a beautiful moment for me, but also for her to have the space in her home where it was turned into a beautiful memory. So for me, that was my favorite memory that I just love and cherish this story. And I will forever have this as a favorite of mine.

Yeah. Wow. That is an incredible story. How did you come up with that solution? Where did that come from? Is that just your creativity shining? Where did that come from? As organizers, we're problem solvers. And whenever there's a problem, we need to find a solution. And there's not just one way of doing something. There's plenty of different ways. So after listening to her story and really taking the time to get to know her, her husband, her family, and just listening to her, I really thought that

she had spoken about, I just don't want to forget them. So that kind of light bulb moment of what if we just took pictures of them and then cleared the space. And we don't want someone to get rid of everything, but we really want the things that are left to really mean something. So the compromise was her favorite three, the jacket that

they got married in was one that she had a really special memory to, of course. So those solutions was a little bit of the creativity, but also just really listening to what the clients actually really need and want and coming up with the solution for them really sets the tone of how we work with our clients. Well, it sounds eerily similar to the financial planning process. Getting to know our clients and able to help find solutions for them.

So maybe we can just take a step back and help kind of set the stage for the rest of the conversation today. And maybe you can just tell us a little bit about you and then what exactly you do for people at your company called Life in General. So I started out as an assistant to a professional athlete and I...

Went from just managing his day-to-day schedule to really doing the nuts and bolts of every single day of him getting up and going throughout his day. But what struck me was he really loved to move in the same city. He always wanted just to move to a different house, but within the same five miles in Manhattan Beach.

And so we joke that my friends are always like, oh my gosh, you have to move him again. And I remember being so ecstatic that I was so pumped to have him go on vacation and then me pack up all of his belongings, color code them, label maker, create the systems from the start in his new place and color code everything and just

have it be very turnkey where he got home from his vacation and everything was set up and every single thing in his home had a home. And I just remember the joy that it brought me and how my friends were like, you are insane, but if that's what makes you happy. So that spurred into...

Every weekend, my friends and family were asking me to organize and purge their closet and help them with their garage and come up with all these creative solutions. So it was probably about when he was coming to retirement and I was thinking about what is next for me. It was really kind of just fell into my lap of just starting life in general because it was

already there on weekends and I wasn't getting paid for it. And I was booked, I think, for six or seven months. And so I said, you know, I think there's something here. And then I just took the leap of starting Life in General in 2014, not just for one client, but for the masses. So really honing in on being able to touch so many different lives and creating systems for every single person. And it was really solely, we're still word of mouth, which I take great pride in.

But back then it was just telling people that, hey, I'm starting this business and if you need any help, and it just kind of snowballed into what it is today. Today, I want to focus on downsizing and downsizing in retirement is extremely common. And sometimes it's actually a necessary financial move. It's also extremely common for people to have lived in their homes for a long time, 20, 25, 30 years, which means they've likely accumulated a lot of stuff.

Maybe you could talk to us about how someone can just start this process of getting organized and preparing to downsize their home without this feeling of overwhelm. Of course. So we tell everyone just to start small. So it's not just a space, but rather a drawer in the space. I use the junk drawer in a kitchen as a perfect example. It really can show you how to organize the rest of your home because once

Really, every space is essentially the same. We pull every single thing out of that space. You sort and categorize. You purge what you no longer need, want, or love. And then you work on the containment and then installing it back in. We actually love when people downsize because we find it a lot of times they end up

purging 75% of their home because of when they really do take the time to do this and see how it makes them feel. They're so surprised about the stuff that they've accumulated over years and years and that they've never even seen or it's been boxed up.

So it's a really fun process and we make it... A lot of people don't want to start because it seems overwhelming. But when you start small in just one little space, one little drawer, it really sets the tone and understanding that you really can do this. So is that typically what you recommend is to start with something small? Do you recommend starting with a certain room or a certain drawer or a certain part of the house or just pick the smallest project and start there? Yeah. It's a combination of a little bit of everything where...

sometimes depending on the client, it's the space that people feel most overwhelmed where I'm like, let's just pick a drawer in that space. But I always revert back to the kitchen drawer of the junk drawer. We call it the joy drawer because that's where it gets a lot of stuff accumulated, just like the garage, but on a much smaller scale. And once they pull out that junk drawer and really see what they're using and categorize and sort, it's

really not as hard as they think. It just seems that way. My suggestion is always the junk drawer if they have one, which most people do, but really just finding the zone and just start and make that plan. I always love to tell people to create a master list of everything so you can get it out of your brain and onto a piece of paper and then just start tackling it.

whether it's pending your schedule of day by day or pick a month project. But it really matters when you start small because you feel such the success and then it feels good and then it will snowball into you can keep going and then you get on fire. And then it's just the best feeling when, of course, our clients say, we started with the junk drawer and now half our house is done and we feel amazing. And I'm like, that's exactly what it's supposed to feel like. So just start small wherever you are.

So if somebody's listening to this and gets fired up and says, you know what, I'm finally going to clean out my junk drawer. They open it up. What's step number one? Empty the whole thing out. And then what's step number two? Where do you go from there if somebody wants to try to tackle this on their own and start to build a small win here? So going back to every space is essentially the same. So you will literally pull out everything out of that drawer.

and wipe it down and take everything out. And then once you're pulling it out, you're going to categorize and sort. So checkbook and pens with pens and scissors and how many scissors do you have? So once you see it all, before you start purging, you have to have all the categories together. And then what we do is called the

purge. So that's when you ask the questions, do you need it? Do you love it? Is it broken? Is this where it belongs? Our questions that we have, and you'd be so surprised what's left. Some people are like, I only have a pen left and all this other stuff has been recycled or moved to a different location where it should be. So that is essentially the process for everything. You pull out, you sort and categorize, you purge, contain, and then you install back in.

Okay. And if somebody is working on a bigger project, they're saying, look, we have to downsize. We got to clean up the whole house and get organized and start getting rid of stuff.

Do you suggest people use a storage unit or what outside things might they use for keepsakes that they definitely want to hang on to if they don't have room for it in the new house? Does that come into play? Maybe you can talk to us a little bit about that. Of course. So we always like to take a step back and devise a plan. So whether that's writing it down and figuring out how much of this do you need to purge, which...

is, again, when you kind of take that step back, a lot of the times, a lot of the stuff people don't even need. So we aren't big on storage spaces just because we feel like it actually ends up containing things that you will never see. But we do understand in certain situations. So it's all about kind of getting organized, creating your list,

Going through that process, starting room by room in the categories and then creating of the items of what do you need now versus in the new home, whereas essentially it's something that you don't need access to right away. We have a lot of clients too that want to hold on things for their kids. We try to really talk through the process of the why and understand that.

But we do get it. Of course, I have an apartment and I have dreams for a house one day. And there's some things that are in my garage that I'm so excited to bring into my house, but I'm not there yet. So just really understanding where it can go and in an organized fashion, of course, without causing all the clutter. What about physical photos? If people have boxes and boxes of physical photos and they just don't want to let go of them, how do you approach that? Do you talk about...

scanning them into the computer and organizing them there? Do you have a system for organizing photos or suggestions? What's your recommendation there? We do love doing as much digital as possible, but we understand people love the physical touch of photos. So once we understand the client's need and their overall goal, we create that plan. We do create piles and understanding how do you want to tackle this? Is it something where you want to do it by year or by project? You

event and really understanding that. And then we use a ton of sticky notes and then we start with small boxes and just start and get going and pulling out all the photos and then creating that plan. But it really is interesting how much stuff that we've found that have gotten ruined because they aren't stored properly. So there's certain different elements with any type of material and with archival paper, with a lot of photos, you need to make sure they're stored well.

wherever they're going. Is it room temperature? Are you putting them in heat? You know, it really matters. And so really creating that process for each client and each photo. But we're huge on scanning. We know that it takes time. So you want to create the plan and the piles and get it all sorted and then understand

understand are we making them digital or not and then go from there. But it's so hard when we find people's wedding books or things that they really do want to keep forever and they've been ruined because they've not been stored properly. So there is pending on what is left different solutions for that.

And if someone is up for digitizing all these photos, do you outsource that? Or do you have a way that they can do it themselves? Or do you help them with that? It depends. So we definitely can, depending on the project. I mean, we can do it all in creating our scanners and where it's going. We love using a company...

like Artifact Uprising is a big one for me where I personally, it's just a beautiful book and they have great company where it's stored forever. And then with Kids Art, Archive is another one we use all the time where you have hundreds and thousands of papers that have noodles from your kids on there and they don't know what to do with it. So there are those solutions where you can send out all of it and then come back where it takes the time away from you and give it

somebody else to do. So we get creative because the reality of it is people say they're going to do it and they don't. So we say, look, for this fee, it can be taken care of off your hands. And that's one project that can come away from you. So we try to get creative and

really suggest if you haven't done it, the likelihood of you doing it is going to be pretty small. So we like to outsource and use these amazing, these are just a few of the companies that we love and trust and we have good relationships with because their work is so beautiful and it's just so nice to put it in the mail and they handle it all.

Yeah, I've never heard of those two companies. Can you share those names again? And then are those just websites that people can go to or do they need to call them? How would you even begin that? They're online. So Artifact Uprising does a ton of coffee table books or beautiful bound books that you can put on a bookshelf where you can really create...

the out cover, what you want it to say on it, how the layout is. So that's Artifact Uprising. And then Archive is one that we use for tons of memorabilia, the trophies and the kids' artwork. They send you a box, you put it all in there. They photograph it professionally, make it beautiful into this box. And then you have an option of them purging of those things properly and disposing of it or sending it back, which we always tell people don't send it back.

because you have the book and then go from there. But it's so nice because in attics or garages, there's, I can't tell you,

20, 30, 40 of those huge tubs that are filled with artwork that they just can't seem to let go of. So this is another, get a five by 10 beautiful bound book and you have it forever. And then they also do stuff where they frame certain pieces. So if there's one in particular you really love. So there's so many solutions and so many great companies out there that we just try to be as resourceful as possible to say, you don't need all this stuff. And if you don't want to forget, it kind of goes back to that client that I had of

the memory of it. It doesn't take up that much space for these little books or even having them online. Great. We'll definitely link to both those companies in the show notes, which can be found at youstaywealthy.com forward slash 49. So if you want to grab those links, you can go there.

Talk to us about married couples going through this process. I have to imagine that there's a lot of situations where one spouse is fired up, ready to go. Let's clean. Let's organize. Let's simplify. And the other spouse is saying, what's wrong? I don't understand. The junk drawer is fine and the closet's fine. And I'm one of those people. My wife is like you. She's super organized. She likes everything to have its place. She's always clean.

I'm not like a total mess or anything like that, but I can tolerate more than she can. Let's talk about the situation where someone has to downsize. They're actually moving. They need to downsize. They need to organize. And one spouse just isn't into it. How do you approach that? So we get this often and we end up sometimes turning into incredible therapists. But we joke that we really do work one-on-one with each. So we most of the time separate them and work with

her items and then his, and then all the stuff that they own together or need to discuss. We talk about what are their goals for this room or space. And then it's really all about compromise because we're not there to choose sides. And I will never make a husband and wife, one of them mad that I chose that. So it's really all about understanding their goals and coming up with these

really creative solutions that says, hey, in this space, we can do this. And in this space, we can do that. But the reality of it is there's going to be some hard conversations and there's going to be some differences of values of what some clients of ours, whether it's the husband or wife, just has to keep everything and that's the opposite.

for the other one. So we run into it a lot, but it comes down to understanding what their goals and values are. And a lot of it is compromise as well, but we have to be super creative in those moments because we want them to stay married. Yeah.

And have that. But once they see our system and our process and what the feeling is, once we do a space, the one that's usually not on board is the one that calls us the next morning and is like, you were right. Can you come back? And sometimes it's the husband. It takes a little like, who are these organizers coming in? Or the wife. And the next day, it's my favorite success story of that's the person who calls me and was like, okay, that room is amazing. I get it. I understand it.

When can you come back? Can you move in with me? Can you all stay here forever? This is great. So it's just all about the system for each. And every single client is different, but there is a baseline that we go off of. How do you want to feel? What kind of life do you want to live? Where do you place your value? And how we can shift that perspective of,

This life that we live in is not about all these things that we collect, but really about the memories of each other and having that. And it's a really beautiful moment when we get that other one that's usually not on board, on board, because they do seem happier of the situation and then they can maintain it.

That's my next question is people will spend thousands of dollars with someone like you to organize and clean up and simplify and do all of this. Do you have any tips for staying organized so that this isn't just a complete waste of time and it doesn't happen again? Yeah. So how I run my company is you invest in this once and you never have to do it again with the caveat of you have to maintain it. So I can't live with you and put all your things back once you pull them out, but I

you just have to go back to remembering that feeling of walking into a space and feeling so stress-free and wonderful. And that how you stay that way is really once something comes out, it needs to go back and where it belongs. And

Obviously, you know, with kids and our likes and our hobbies, they're ever evolving. So you're really shifting that over time. But the foundation of the containment and the labeling and creating zones and categories, that always stays the same and it just grows as you grow. So it's something that you really do want to maintain it because you feel so great when you have it. And that goes a long way. And you'll remember that when...

it goes backwards. So creating that space for you and just maintaining it. What's been your biggest surprise as a professional organizer? Is there anything that you've experienced or come across and you're just like, wow, I never thought I would see this when I started this business? I think the biggest surprise to me when I started was just people's attachment to things versus life.

And that's what really drives me in continuing this business. And I know that this will be my business forever in some capacity. Because when you watch someone, we had a client once that the psychology of it all and if I could do my life over and maybe one day I'll go back to school for that and also design because it all goes hand in hand. We had a client that had a room and they had this goal for it was a gym and they wanted the gym to be cleared, but it had just everything kind of like a garage would be.

have with just the stuff that's accumulated. They hadn't used the gym in forever. They're very fortunate to be able to have a gym, but they weren't using it. But they had an attachment to paperclips. And that one was a really big one for me because there was like thousands of paperclips and

and not even like working paperclips and understanding the, are we turning this into an art project? No, that kind of stuff. So I think that was a big aha moment for me of the psychology of it all. And I really took a step back and,

thought, this is something I really want to get across to people that life is so much bigger than organizing a closet or keeping your home in order. It is such a beautiful thing, but there's so much life to be lived with experiences and people and memory that that is

You can't put a price tag on that. You can't buy that. So it's always very surprising when there's an attachment to something that they don't even use or it's in a box and they've never even seen it, especially going back to the storage units where...

There's things in boxes they will never, and they will say, we will never touch this, but we have to keep it. And so that for me is always like, I just never thought that this would become a thing. And it happens often. So really talking through people. And I love to say we have a very high success rate of really understanding that and sitting with the client to where they

get it and showing them what their space could look like and then coming back and saying, you know what, you're right. We can really let go of all these things and find another beautiful home for it. And a lot of to kind of the second part to that is there is a psychology behind where is it

going. And we find, we partner with, I think, seven or eight different charities now, Children's Hospital and some really incredible women's and men's shelters. So when they know that something is going to a place where someone really needs it, it changes their perspective. So we really are big proponents of saying, hey, I know you're not using this thing and I know you're attached to it, but let's talk through this because there's somebody else that really

really could use it where they don't have it and then they really do get on board. So that's always a success for us. But it never kind of, I always remember that first time that it happened to me and I'm like, okay, I want to get in their shoes and understand more before we make solutions for them.

How do you handle a situation where somebody is in another state? So you're out here in California, but there's somebody in Texas that came across you and they want your help. Do they have to fly you out to Texas and pay for your hotel room for a week? Or is there a way that you can help people virtually? Anyone can hire us and anyone can fly us out. We joke that we're based out of Los Angeles, but in the last four months we've been in, I think,

We're in 14 states. It just kind of is a test to life in general and the company. I'm really proud that people will pay for us to fly to a state where they have other organizers because they know the value that they're going to get with us. And they really are only going to do it once. And I take

great pride in why we are different and who we are. But there are people that can't afford to fly us out and we want to be accessible to everyone. So we do have a virtual program where they can send us a video or see pictures and measurements of the space. And we either do FaceTime or Skype and we really come up with a plan for them. And it's more of like the DIY version, which is really fun to see the outcome for everyone. And then the texts and emails and phone calls months later of

I'm so happy I did this because I've kept it up because of everything you guys have taught me. And they watch us on Instagram and they're continuing to learn more things. So we want to be accessible to everyone, which is why we have that option. And we understand if someone has a utility closet or a small space, they're not going to fly us to New York or we've had it happen before. But I'm always like, we can help you or we do have other options.

local organizing friends that we do suggest as well. So it's really depends on the client and what their needs are, but we are accessible to everyone that wants to get organized. Very cool. It's neat to hear that you figured out a way for people to work with you and kind of do it themselves and for you to follow along and track and hold them accountable. So that's awesome.

So a lot of our clients and a lot of the listeners of this podcast are retired, but they're not just retired sitting at home doing nothing. Most people that are retired, they want to stay involved either volunteering for a charity or a lot of them work part time. So if somebody is listening to this and they're like, Jen is speaking my language. I am Jen. I love to do all this. I love to organize everything.

And they're thinking, maybe I'd make a good professional organizer and just do this part-time and help out some friends and family and whatnot. Do you have any suggestions for somebody that would be interested in working in this field and picking this up, even if it's on like a part-time basis? Yes. Well, we actually get asked this a lot. I love that this is a question because...

it's a big passion of a lot of people that they didn't even realize that they had until they have time on their hands to say, you know, I had this incredible career or they were stay-at-home moms and had this beautiful time with their kids. And now their kids are off to college and they want this other life for them. I think it's just really understanding what their goal is there. If it's, do they want to make extra income? Do they want to do it for fun only? Do they want to do it for just friends and family? So it really kind of

understanding what they want, but then also going from that moment to just start the process of whether it's in your own home or reaching out to friends and family and starting small and then growing off of that. But we actually do have some people on our team that their kids are off to college and they have

always wanted to do this. And they're like, oh my gosh, I've been doing this for my family for years and I haven't been getting paid for it. Didn't know it was a profession. So I always say do the research depending on the city that you live in because the industry across the board is pretty diverse.

typical and the same, but there is different. Every state charges a little different based on the company and really kind of honing in on, do you want to work in certain spaces only? You know, I have some organizing friends that just do garages or just do closets. So just kind of understanding what you want and then mapping out a plan. I actually do a mentorship program for those people. So we have like a coaching and mentorship program.

of talking them through kind of how to start a business and organizing business wherever you are in the world. So I have a lot of clients that I do that on the side because I want people to understand how amazing and rewarding this profession is. It's a lot of work to own your own business, but it

it really is. You get to see projects from start to finish and the before and afters are such a dream. So I like to tell anyone and everyone if they want to do it, they can reach out to me, of course, but just understanding, building the community around them with other like-minded people. Great. Okay. Well, we'll be sure to share your contact information or at least provide a way for them to reach out to you, whether it's through your website or email. We'll talk offline to figure out the best way for that.

Let's just kind of wrap up here with just an example I'd like to better understand myself. So my wife and I, we own a, it's called a 2,500 square foot home out here in San Diego. There's four bedrooms, there's two and a half bath. We've got two kids.

And let's say we want to downsize. We want to go to a smaller home. We want to organize and clean up. What does a project like that cost on average? And then how long does a project like that take? So this is a question we get every single day, multiple times a day. And people will say, how much for this type of bedroom or this? It actually does not matter the size of your home or apartment or condo or studio really, or anything. It's the inventory inside of it.

So you and your neighbor could have the exact same foundation. You could live on a block street that has the same amount of kids, the same amount of rooms, the exact same layout. And your house could take a week longer or a day longer. It really, really depends on what's inside you.

of your space because you could have a hundred thousand things in one room or four pieces of furniture. So kind of going back, we get asked this a lot, mainly because people just want to know there is no set way for a kitchen or a room. But what we do is we say, you can send us

pictures and videos and or we do it on site. And then we send a proposal of we need four days, five team members or two days, six team members. So we've actually this month alone have done a lot of downsizing for people who have either moved out of state or there was a passing in their family or really they want to sell their home. And so every single proposal was completely different because it was really based on their needs and what is inside that home.

Can you maybe just give me a range for just like the average kind of house, average cost that somebody would expect to spend? So it kind of goes back to depends on what it is, but we charge by the hour. So our industry is usually roughly $150 to $250 an hour. We charge $185 for every two team members. We did...

I'll just take the last month because we did three full projects like this. One of them we did, it was 15K, but they've been in the house for, I want to say, 45 years and they had four kids. So it took my team five days. I want to say there was four people on site every single day. And we also are full service. So we take care of the haulers, the shredding, the donations, the trash. I mean, we are full service to the T. So when you hire us and if you want to do a full house,

nuts to bolts, every single thing in order to prep you to downside, which we always suggest because you don't want to take anything to your next place that you don't need, want, or love. So that one particular client was 15K. Again, they'd been there. They had, I want to say it was 3,000 square feet.

And then we did same exact, which took us two days. And I think we had five team members. So it's roughly $2,500 a day if we have four or five people on site, which is an eight hour day. And we get a lot done. So again, could be two days, three days, four days. The longest we've ever done for a full house was six days. And I think that total was 20,000. But again, we also help them with all the memories, all the shredding,

scrapbooking all of putting everything digitally for all their office paperwork. So again, it's an investment if you're doing every single inch of your home, but it's something that you only need to do once. And then it really changes the way actually you live from there on out. And then you have this kind of, everyone has a to-do list and it really takes away from that because we've done everything for you. And then you just maintain it and you know where everything is and all the memories and all the moments and all of that.

So going back to, we do charge hourly and we do project-based proposals, but it's so dependent on the inventory of what's inside that home. I can imagine. And I can see the benefit and the value. I know you've done some work with my wife and I can see it firsthand, but I mean, it's not cheap. We might have to start factoring this into people's financial plans here. And I will say to that point, it's the best investment you will ever make because of the

Just moving into a new space and creating that life, especially when you're coming from retirement and you have all this time to do these things that you've worked so hard your entire life for. So what do you want in this second phase of your life? And you don't want to spend it organizing and decluttering and purging forever. So doing it right.

the first time, you never have to do it again. And then you have all the years with your family and friends and all that. But if someone's going to tackle it themselves, it's never too early to start. So even if you're thinking of downsizing 10 years from now, 15 years, there's no better time than the present. And we really, really try to tell people to live in the present moment because we aren't guaranteed tomorrow. But we really want to make sure that you're prepared when you

does come down to retirement and downsizing that you have the best system in place. And so we talked to a lot of people of make room for that financially and in your brain that time, because it really does matter and it changes the course of the rest of your life. Well,

I really appreciate you coming on today and sharing all of this with us. It's a little bit different of a topic than we normally cover, but I think it's really, really important and something that comes up a lot. So I really appreciate you sharing all of this. Where can people find you, follow you, connect with you? What do you suggest? So,

all of our info is on our website, Life in General and Generals with a J. And then our Instagram handle, people love just because of the before and after. So we always tell people it's fun to even watch. And then everything's online. We will link to everything in the show notes, which again can be found at youstaywealthy.com forward slash 49. And again, thanks so much for coming on, Jen. I really appreciate this. Thank you so much.

Hey, it's me again. I just wanted to say thank you one more time for listening and remind you to please, please, please leave a quick review. If you're on an iPhone, leave a quick review on iTunes. If you're enjoying the show, I'm getting great feedback from listeners just like you. And I really want to keep the momentum going. So if you have a chance on your iPhone, leave a quick review on the Apple podcast app. And thank you so much in advance for all of your help and support.

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