Freaked out and Small

idk why I picked that title. A borrow from a P.U.S.A. album.  But I AM a little freaked out. We are talking about moving. Out of the house we've lived in for 9 years, our first home. The only home the Kraken has ever known. But, we're doing it for 3 pretty major reasons.
1. Downsizing. We want, no NEED, to downsize. We need to gut this place of the CRAP we have accumulated over 9 years. We need to sell some crap, give some away, "thin the herd" as it were. At one point we were overflowing with (unwanted) furniture. We thinned that, but not enough. MIL and FIL started bringing all their crap over here 6 years ago when they moved, and for some reason, their son, my husband, couldn't or wouldn't tell them no. Moving on. We also have some stuff my family has given me, some living room stuff that we just don't use/want/need anymore.
2. School zoning. Last school year at this time, it was announced that our house would be included (as well as most of our sub-d) in a high school rezoning which took my oldest to a brand new (beautiful IMHO) high school, yet, away from her best friend and boyfriend. The latter two I wasn't terribly worried about, but still. You don't move into a home where you can SEE the school from your front yard and think "by the time my kid's old enough, she'll move to a different school further away." Nope, it was ridiculous, raged over by many parents and students alike, yet, all the raging against the local machine was to no avail. The zoning happened. She is less unhappy than she thought she'd be, but still pining for her previous HS. Also, she seems to be doing rather well this year. It's early, but last year she was BARELY hanging on. Time will tell.
3. Last and most important: MONEY. That's always the clincher, isn't it? Well, it's a sellers market right now, with few homes on the market in this area, the ones that do go up, get snatched pretty quickly. We are thinking "sell as high as we can, get into smaller more affordable home (even apt maybe), then pay off debt if we have enough left over. At least if we can't pay off debt after that, we can at least pay less per month on the home and start paying more to get extraneous debt paid off faster, and then start putting $ away for the kids' college.

I've downloaded the Zillow app, and already found some promising items, most within a mile and zoned for the schools we WANT. Here's hoping. Fingers x'ed....

Peace...