9 Things North Carolina Retirees Should Toss This Year Before Downsizing

Do you think the hard part of downsizing is finding a smaller place?

Many people would disagree.

The harder part is deciding what to leave in your old driveway.

These are the things a North Carolina retiree should toss before downsizing.

Chemicals the Movers Can’t Load

A garage is where downsizing often hits its first snag.

Half a shelf of old paint sits there, next to a gas can for the mower, a propane tank, and a jug of pool chemicals.

No moving company will put any of it on the truck.

They legally can’t.

Moving companies ban gasoline, propane, paint thinner, aerosols, corrosive cleaners, and pool chemicals because of fire and explosion risk.

The good news?

North Carolina runs county hazardous waste drop-off sites for exactly this kind of waste.

So, clear your garage before the moving truck comes, not the morning of.

A Freezer Full of Food

Fridges and freezers can’t ride in a moving truck with things inside.

Movers won’t load perishable food. A fridge or freezer has to travel empty, defrosted, and dry.

Empty and defrost your unit about 24 to 48 hours before the truck arrives, or you’ll be mopping water and fighting mildew on moving day.

Your venison from last deer season, freezer-burned casseroles, and ice cream from two summers ago will never make the trip.

Eaten now, that food is money saved.

Packed frozen, it’ll thaw to garbage before you clear the county line.

Big Furniture

Big furniture is where moving quotes can turn brutal.

A moving quote often rises with weight. So, hauling a sectional, a china hutch, and a wall of bookcases to a smaller place can cost more than those pieces are worth.

Measure your new rooms first.

The nine-foot sectional that filled your old den could wall off half of your new condo living room.

Your formal dining table may not clear the new doorway at all.

Sell the oversized pieces, or hand them to a Habitat for Humanity ReStore that picks up.

A new, smaller sofa you buy after moving in beats paying movers by the pound to wedge your old couch through a stairwell.

Old Mattress and Box Spring

A tired mattress is the wrong thing to haul up to a new bedroom in your downsized home.

A sagging queen set is bulky, heavy, and awkward on the stairs.

Most thrift stores and charities won’t accept a used mattress since health rules and bedbug worries keep them from reselling it.

So, you’d pay to move something nobody else will take for free.

Even worse, moisture from damp North Carolina summers settles into old foam and never fully dries out.

Leave your mattress behind, buy a new bed once you’re at your new address, and let the delivery crew carry the box up for you.

China You Never Use

Formal china behind glass doors is the classic downsizing standoff.

A full service for twelve is heavy, fragile, and slow to pack, and it eats a box you’d rather fill with something you reach for more than once a decade.

Be honest about the last time that gravy boat left your cabinet.

Wedding china, silver-rimmed platters, and crystal punch bowls often sit untouched from one holiday to the next.

Your kids likely don’t want the set because formal china fell out of fashion over a generation ago.

Keep the few pieces you love, and sell or donate the rest before moving.

Decades of Old Paperwork

Filing cabinets stuffed with old paper turn up in most downsizing purges.

Bank statements from the 1990s, paid utility bills, dead warranties, and tax returns older than your car all take up weight and space.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) generally wants records for three years, or up to six or seven in special cases, not thirty.

Shred, don’t toss.

Old statements carry account numbers and Social Security numbers, so a curbside bag of them is a gift to an identity thief.

Scan anything you absolutely must keep, and let the rest of the paper go.

Obsolete Electronics and Media

You’ll likely dig a graveyard of dead electronics out of your back closet before the moving truck comes.

A boat-anchor tube television, a videocassette recorder, a shoebox of old videotapes, and a tangle of cords for devices you no longer own have all been waiting in there.

North Carolina has banned televisions and computers from its landfills since 2011, so a trash can isn’t even an option.

And old tapes are a lost cause.

In a damp Carolina summer, cassettes warp and mold creeps across the tape reels, so those home movies are likely already fading.

Nobody wants the tube TV.

Recycle the electronics through a county e-cycle site, and digitize any tape worth saving before it disappears.

The Expired Medicine Cabinet

The medicine cabinet fills up over the years, and the move is when you finally face it.

Half-used prescriptions, expired painkillers, and vitamins from three doctors ago crowd the shelf.

None of it belongs in a moving box.

Loose pills in transit are a hazard around kids and a temptation you don’t want riding in an open truck.

Flushing most of them fouls the water, and dropping them loose in the trash isn’t safe either.

Many North Carolina sheriff’s offices and pharmacies keep drop boxes for old medications, open year-round.

Leave it out.

Clear your medicine cabinet down to what you still take, and carry that small bag with you rather than loading it on the moving truck.

Yard Gear With No Yard

A condo or a townhome leaves yard gear with nowhere to go.

Your riding mower, tiller, spreaders, and two extension ladders all require use in a yard you no longer have.

Sell the big equipment to a neighbor or on a local marketplace.

None of it will fit on your new downsized patio.