[This is the first post in a series of posts that I’ve been saving up until our house sold.]
Almost eight years ago, my wife and I bought the house that we thought would be our last house. The house had all the room we thought we’d need, a large lot, a pool, and was in a good neighborhood with good schools.
After some discussion with my wife about how our plans have changed over the years, we decided at the beginning of the year to sell our house and look for a place that was smaller and a bit closer to the coast. The process began with 2 months of preparation cleaning out our house to get rid of things and store other things (we had plenty of storage). Our house went up for sale around the beginning of March and by the beginning of April, we accepted an offer.
The next step in the process was looking for a house to rent to give us time to scope out the market and find the “perfect” house. The rental house we found is about 1600 square feet. The house we just sold had close to 2700 square feet, so we had (and still have) a lot of “thinning” to do. The more we look at the stuff we have, the more we’re taking a harder look at if we need it. My wife and I both realized that we aren’t the kind of people that need a lot of material things; there are some things that we really like (our tech gadgets) and some sentimental things, but a lot of things we’ve collected over the years just aren’t used and we can’t even remember that we have them.
If we can survive in our rental with a lot less space (I am still determined to get both cars in the garage that is currently filled with an extra couch, a washer and dryer, a refrigerator, and tons of boxes), then I think we’ll be good to buy a house of similar size and eliminate more junk from our lives.
When we’ve mentioned to people that we’re “downsizing” our house, they kind of look at us funny. We’re not that old and downsizing of a house is something that people do as they get older and no longer have kids at home. However, for us, we decided that the timing is right. It is also helping us to realize what is really important in our lives.