We recently downsized. Besides the obvious – a smaller house, there were some other unexpected downsizes.
- Our electric bill isn’t much higher in Florida where our a/c runs 24/7 than it was in PA where we almost never ran the a/c (I was too cheap to run it). Smaller house equals less space to cool equals smaller bill. Plus there’s no gas bill (our heat was gas)!
- Having a smaller house means less space to clean (major plus!). I can plug my cleaner in one central location and vacuum the whole house!
- Less space means only keeping stuff that’s really important. When we moved we went through and got rid of a lot of stuff. Then after we were moved in, we got rid of more stuff. We’re still working on getting rid of stuff!
Obviously a smaller house won’t work for everyone, and I wouldn’t have believed it would work for us either! We used to live in a 3 bedroom, 1.5 bath, 1400 square foot home. As we had our three kids, it felt like the house was getting smaller and smaller. When we moved, we wanted bigger – bigger house, bigger (attached) garage, bigger yard. We got bigger – 3 big bedrooms (plus plenty of room in the basement for a couple more), 2.5 bathrooms, an attached 2 car garage, almost an acre of ground with a nice portion fenced in. The house was just over 3900 square feet – plenty of room for three kids and all their stuff. It did work for a while, but then it was just big and we weren’t very content. I didn’t get along with our neighbor. We didn’t use all the space in our house. We were tired of snow and being cold. There was nothing holding us there – no family nearby and hubby was ready for a job change. So, we prayed and listed our house. Long story short – it took over a year to sell, but in the mean time we were able to pay cash for a smaller house in Florida (hello endless summer!).
Having less space to take care of means more time for:
- going to the beach
- reading
- sewing
- geocaching
- playing the piano and organ
- playing with the kids
For that extra time, I am grateful!
Join us for Gratituesday at Heavenly Homemakers!
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