In some ways our decision to sell the house and downsize by half seemed spontaneous but in other ways it had been a long time coming. Like years and years. It felt good. It felt great. We were excited. I’ll spare you the painful details of getting the house ready to sell, having it on the market for 3 months before it sold (which felt like an eternity) and the search for the new house. We had about 2 months between getting a contract on the “old” house and moving into the “new” house so plenty of time to prepare for the move. The old house was 3 levels and over 4000 sq. feet. 4 bedrooms plus a main level office a finished basement with a playroom and another “bedroom” that was set up as my photography studio all the time plus all the stuff in the unfinished storage. The new house was about 2300 sq feet. Still 4 bedrooms but all of them smaller. The unfinished storage was probably half of what it was at the old house and everything was on a smaller scale. Closets, bathrooms, kitchen, everything.
Truth be told over the last few years I had discovered my affinity for organizing and getting rid of stuff. I’m not sure how it happened but it had gotten to the point that if I ever got stressed out I would go to one of the storage closets or basement storage and organize. Move things around, consolidate, get rid of things. It felt so good when I was done. It was kind of addicting. I would actually go help my friends do it. For fun. I know kind of weird.
Now we never really used up all the space in the old house. There was nothing under the bathroom sinks in any of the 6 bathrooms (I know crazy right?), none of the closets were bursting, if any of the kids had more than 10 or 12 shirts I would put the extras in a bag to donate, before all birthdays and holidays the kids would have to pick out toys to donate. But despite all this we still had to get rid of stuff if we were going to fit in the new house so I got to work. Using the general rule that if I hadn’t used it or even looked at it (except for special save stuff) in the last year then I could probably live without it we were able to get rid of enough stuff. The move went well. We fit it all into 2 large PODS and moved in. Everything seemed to fit pretty well. Except the kitchen. Our kitchen at the old house was pretty big but the new house had a decent size pantry and storage under the big island so I thought we would be ok. But we weren’t. In the end we had a bunch of stuff on the kitchen table that we went through to decide what to keep. How many sets of mixing bowls does one person really need? Serving platters? Casserole dishes? Dessert plates? You get the idea. And we made it all fit. The basement took a little figuring out but we managed to make it all fit in an organized way without having to get rid of anything more.
We were in. It was done. We loved it.
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