“The impending move has made me really think about all of the stuff we have and what we want to bring to this house.” You may remember that statement from a post not so long ago, well typing out that little sentence sent me on a huge tangent that made me realize the topic of downsizing my stuff needed to have its own post.

Currently we live in about 750 SF with a small storage space, and we are moving to a 1200 SF home with roughly the same size (1100 SF) storage space plus a garage. I know I should be out shopping and doing happy dances because now I have “so much more room to fill with stuff”.

Here’s the thing; to me stuff is just stuff and what clutters my space, clutters my mind.

This house is a house that we want to build our life and family in. This is the space that we will finally start to live more sustainably and closer to nature, something that has been weighing on me in my many apartments for so long. This is a new, fresh start. It is the beginning of our dreams.

I know some people are rolling their eyes at my dramatics over a house, but my dreams are small and this house is a huge part of my big dream, the colossal step that I have needed for so long now.

I’m afraid to soil this new start with old junk. I’m not saying that I’m tossing all of my furniture and buying new, on the contrary we plan to keep most of our hand me downs until they wear through, or we find replacements that we love. For me it’s the little things like unworn clothes, ridiculous mugs (we have a lot), Tea I don’t like (surprisingly large collection of that too) papers (we have so many papers), old electronics, and other useless stuff.  I don’t want to continue to live like this. I said before that I want to wear clothes that feel good, and that I like. I don’t want to tote around old gifts (the many mugs & teas) because I feel guilty that we don’t use them. The papers, junk and old electronics I really can’t explain, I just think that’s everyone these days. I don’t want these old things and feelings following me around.

In this house we are going to build our family and for that we need to have open space to allow that family to (hopefully) grow.

There is quite a bit of stuff that I have given to my mother to sell at her craft fairs & secondhand stores (she loves them). Some will go on Craig’s List, some will be given away and some just be thrown out.  Our home will be sparse for a while, but it will be loved and allow us the time to really create a space that is more than just a dwelling. Filling our space with carefully selected, good quality pieces slowly will I think allow us to really feel out our lifestyle and only bring in what we actually need. I hope this will allow us to keep open space in our lives to welcome a larger family one day.

In the future I hope to keep us from getting to this point of too much stuff. Regular clean outs will be mandatory, and I’d really love to go paperless soon (think scanners and offsite computer back ups). Having already cleaned out my closet I learned a lot about my style and hope that I can avoid the wonky ridiculous wardrobe I once had. I filled my wedding registry with things like reusable bags, cloth napkins, canning jars and other stuff to move toward sustainability. Yes we have to store those things, but we won’t be storing a back stock of single use items (like paper towels) instead, and that to me is huge.

I could go on about our plans for this little home for days, but this post seems like it is long enough. Now I would love to hear your thoughts on living with less. Anyone bought a house recently? How did you feel about moving in your stuff? How did you decorate and choose pieces for your new home? I’m very curious!

Ok so I finally got my act together and put together a post with pictures or our lovely new home.

First thing you walk into here is the living room. I love the window and the fireplace, those and the closets in this place were enough to pretty much sell me.

Next up is the kitchen & dining room. Neither are huge, but they are a vast improvement on my current situation, and I have big plans for the spaces, including a nice big door where the dining room window is. There’s too much I want to do in the kitchen to even really talk about here, so we will save that for another day as well.

Down the hall is the bright bathroom, sans tub. That’s right this one bathroom place has no tub. It’s depressing, but that will be changing hopefully soon, fingers crossed this wedding doesn’t make its way into the tub budget. I’m also not a huge fan of the paint color. It kind of clashes with my hair, so it must go.

The two smaller bedrooms are just fine. Big closest and I like the paint colors, so those will get set up no problem.

The master on the other hand needs a carpet and some paint. We are putting all this effort into the floors, I’m not letting flying dog bones ruin them. This means we are the quest for a perfectly soft and squishy carpet for our bare feetsies for this room. I’m thinking a nice light grey will brighten up the room, without being too much and it’s super versatile.

And there you have it our little home. There’s also a large basement and a fenced in back yard for the little man that you don’t see here, but I’m sure they will be shared soon enough. We are working hard right now to get these floors done so that we can actually move in sometime this week, so please bear with me over here while I try to keep this blog going in between work, construction and moving.

Any moving or floor advice? We could use it all right now.

After a few months of house hunting I have learned quite a bit about this process, and more about foundations, electrical panels and septic tanks than I care to know. Every place is different when it comes to home buying, we even noticed major differences in the span of a few miles, but here are the basics of what I learned, most of which I believe are pretty universal.

1. Its way more emotional than you think. Seriously it is like a roller coaster, you get so attached and then you lose the house one way or another and it feels like you are starting from scratch.
2. What you want in the beginning will may not be what you want half way through or at the end of the process. While we stayed with the same basic idea, our priorities changed a lot. We realized how much a big back yard outweighed a second bathroom, and that we actually did really want a fireplace.
3. You have no idea what the seller is thinking. Don’t even try to guess. We had the higher offer on one house and the seller still chose the lower offer. We have no idea why.
4. The other houses in the neighborhood can affect the value of your house. If your house is the nicest house on the street its value could be dragged down by the houses around it.
5. The orientation of the house can affect the amount of light that the house gets. This one is kind of intuitive, but it’s something that we kept forgetting to consider while we were visiting many homes. Knowing that the living room never gets sunlight but the bedroom is in direct morning light can really affect how you feel about the house.
6. Foundations are always a problem spot. We saw 1 maybe 2 houses that did not have some issue with the foundation.
7. Closing costs are probably more than you think. First off there are the loan fees, taxes, lawyer fees, the inspection fees, if you have a septic, that’s another inspection and fee. It all adds pretty quickly.
8. No amount of research will prepare you for walking into that nasty old living room. The pictures might be great, it might be in the best location, and the price is amazing, but then you walk in the door and realize the ceiling is only 6 feet high, the walls are actually painted particle board, and that cool brick fireplace is actually brick wall paper.
9. You may never get that Everyone talks about getting a “feeling” when they walk into the house they want. Sometimes you go with the house that makes sense, and the feeling comes after. Some people need to see their stuff in the house to get all the feels.
10. You can fire your realtor. We didn’t have this problem, our realtor was awesome, but I have known people who were unsatisfied and stopped working with them, even if you signed up with them there is a way out, though you may need lawyer to help you figure it out.