When we bought our home in 2015, it was just Colin and me. We’d been living downtown in the Tobacco District in an 800 sq ft. loft, so a three bedroom home felt huge to us! In the five years that followed, we added Cash, Quinn, and Gray to our family. We’ve now outgrown this 1500 sq ft. Even though, I knew the day was coming, I stayed in denial. I became an expert at utilizing tiny spaces and optimizing the space we had. Then came a pandemic, where I was working from home with all three kids. The realization that we didn’t have enough space was not surprising, but it was painful.
It’s been said that I make decisions backwards. I decide and then I begin to worry about all the details after the fact. Honestly, I’m not even sure how we made this decision. One day I was browsing houses, then we were “just looking”, and then we were under contract. Then I cried. For days. I love our neighborhood, our community, our house. People kept telling me it was because I brought my kids home to this house, but the truth is I cried like this when we left Colin’s little basement apartment too. My process is that I have to start to shift from what we are leaving to what we are moving towards. It just takes me a while to get there.
The new house is all the things we need to get through the rest of this pandemic, and the teenage years. One thing that helped me make a decision about moving was to write down the values I hope to cultivate in our family in a new space. The list included things like a kitchen that is a gathering place for late night conversations, a place to have family and friends comfortably come visit us, a place where kids can play inside or outside with little supervision, space of my own for working and working out. I also relied on the happiness research that says people idealize the past and the future, and can only accurately report how happy they are in the moment. I talked to my friends who had upsized and those that had downsized.
I hope we landed in a home that will help our family become even closer, rather than separating us. The floor plan should help with that. I hope our home will let us enjoy more time with our people, once we don’t have to stay distant any longer. And I hope we are moving to a home where we can create a million more happy memories together!
Joyful Striving 