Embracing a Smaller Home With a Bigger Family

As I sit here on my couch in my small and quaint family room, watching my three growing kids running up and down the only hallway in our bungalow, I think, When will we outgrow this perfect little home? Have we outgrown it? When will the sister wars of sharing a room start? Or have they started? I would really love a master suite, all to myself…

But, the thought of moving makes me cringe. The packing. Oh, the effing packing!!!

We recently worked with a wonderful architect to help us decide if building on or moving made more sense. He drew up all of our wants, a master suite, two bedrooms upstairs with a full bath, a new porch with an extended gable, and a screened-in porch in the back. It sounded and looked amazing. The drawings were incredible and promising. But mostly, my husband and I could see this working for our family of five.

You see, we really do LOVE our home. We spent months renovating it before moving in. It’s also the home I grew up in with my parents and three other siblings until I got married. When my parents divorced a few years later, my mom moved, and my dad kept the home as my two younger siblings still wanted to live there. But, as they got older, he was ready to move.

The home definitely took a beating over the years (bless my dad’s heart who thought he was a licensed contractor but instead pretty much taped and stapled things up as the years went by!). With a single income and four young children, we helped out A LOT. Snaking drains comes to mind…

 

If you live in Berkley or the surrounding areas, this area floods. Not often, but it still happens enough that you consider making a huge investment in waterproofing your basement. I think it was 1993; I was 10 years old and specifically remember our parents telling us how expensive this was, but that we would never have to snake the drain again!

We used to have a beautiful house, much much larger, but it was not “home.” It was everything I thought I wanted at the time: perfect location, large yard, spacious, and a money pit like many homes, large or small, can become. We stayed in it for two years and decided to downsize for a few reasons. We bought low and could sell much higher, which would allow us to buy my dad’s home, a business my husband was considering, and also I would be able to continue to stay home and raise our children. 

 

Even more pressing on my heart and mind was this idea of wanting more, doing more, and having more crap. At the same time, my best friend’s brother was diagnosed with ALS. To see her brother, my friend, a young man with so much life left to live, and it being taken away by this disease was absolute hell to watch. That’s the thing: we only get this one life, one chance to live our best life, and it was the icing on the cake: we chose to live.