I spoke with a lady once who gave me a whole new perspective on downsizing. She had moved from a very large historic house into a condo. I commented it must have been hard to do that and her response was "oh no, now I am surrounded by my favorites" She went on to explain that she had so much of everything to fit into such a large house and when she moved to smaller place all she had room for were her favorite dishes, her favorite furniture and so on. I took a look around my big house and realized that most of the stuff was not what I would call my favorite and if I did pick out my favorites in each room I would have enough to nicely put together a much smaller place. So don't think of it as a matter of getting rid of stuff but rather keeping your favorites.