As appliances grow bigger and better, people who are planning to downsize may struggle to take those with them. All is not lost, though. There are plenty of compact appliances and furniture options for you to consider. The largest and most cumbersome of all appliances are laundry and kitchen appliances. So, let’s start the compact furniture and appliances for downsizing conversation right here.
Washing Machine & Dryer
You have multiple options available to you here. The first is choosing a hand-powered washing machine. They are small and portable, as well as environmentally friendly. They’re fairly lightweight as well and can hold quite a bit of laundry in each load. Of course, it means you have to hand-power it with your own might.
Or, you could choose a combination washer and dryer. You can wash your clothes and then set them to dry. This isn’t ideal if you do a lot of laundry because you will have to wait for two cycles to finish before you start a new load. However, it’s a great way to save space and there are energy efficient options available. If you don’t love this idea, you can always invest in two smaller units that are designed to stack. That should save you a bit of space.
Kitchen Appliances
You probably lived for many years without one, but once you have a dishwasher it’s difficult to go back. Luckily, there are countertop options. The great part is there’s no need to renovate a kitchen to make space and it doesn’t need professional installation either. So, even if you’re moving into a small apartment or a Granny Flat, you will have space for it.
There are a lot of considerations to make for your kitchen appliances. For example, fridge/freezers take up an awful lot of space. You may not want to bother with a freezer, a simple wine cooler might be all you need for a fridge. There are also smaller fridge/freezer combinations available. These are small enough to slide under your kitchen countertops. What about air conditioning? There are window options to limit installation and save on space. You may want to think about a combination microwave oven as well. You don’t need to worry about having two appliances when one will serve you just fine.
Compact furniture and appliances for downsizing
You can get rid of extra mixing bowls, salad tossers, baking trays, and serving platters. You don’t need them all. Additionally, take a look at all of your gadgets – which ones are single-use? How often do you really use them? You probably don’t do so often so, get rid of it! You don’t need an assortment of soup bowls, cereal bowls, and pasta bowls. You just need bowls that will do for all of those things.
Think about your coffee maker – do you really need it or could you replace it with a French press? Do you have multiple appliances that do the same job? Choose the one that you use most often or is the most efficient and dump the rest.
Then, there are the smart furniture options. If your furniture can also serve as storage, then you are winning a major battle in the process of downsizing. People that move into tiny houses don’t buy or install anything that won’t do more than one job for them. You have to adopt that same attitude as you downsize.
Read more Tips and Tricks on Downsizing
Add Comment