Believe it or not, we’ve lived in our new house for over six months now. Half a year! So we thought this would be a good time to check in on some of the goals we had for moving and downsizing to see what has met and exceeded our expectations – along with detailing some of the biggest challenges we’ve encountered along the way.
This is going to be long & detailed, because it feels like there’s a lot of ground to cover, and while this rundown will be pretty specific to our situation, I think it’ll still give you a good window into the realities of downsizing that you might also encounter if you were to go for it. And yes, it includes money details. And a chart. You know I love charts.
To Recap, Why Did We Move?
We’ve got a thorough explanation of our reasons for moving from Virginia to Florida in this post from February. But the gist, as we said back then, was that we wanted to “live with less and be outside more.”
For years we’ve been working towards paring down and owning less stuff (so many podcast eps about that!) and all of the apparent perks of downsizing really appealed to us, like spending less money on things you don’t need (and less money heating & cooling a space you don’t use). Devoting less time to cleaning, organizing, & maintaining a house and those aforementioned surplus belongings is also something that really sounded good to us (as people who have probably devoted 20 solid days of our lives to “cleaning up the garage” over the last 15 years).
Costa Rica which led to our kids heavily campaigning to move there because they love the beach & warm weather as much as we do). Again, there’s more detail in this post about our big decision to move if you want it.
exactly how we approached paring downWe also have some podcast interviews from further back with others who downsized, which majorly inspired us as well, like this one featuring Dana Miller, entitled: In Pursuit of Buying Less & Doing More and this one featuring Shavonda Gardner, entitled What’s It Really Like To Downsize?
So that’s the answer to the “how did you actually downsize?” question – now let’s dive into how living with less and being outside more over these last 6 months has actually felt (and some specific, quantifiable benefits that downsizing very clearly brought into our lives).
Having Less Space
Spending last summer in our 1,800 square foot beach house gave us lots of confidence about living full-time in a smaller home. But I’d be lying if I said the news of the pandemic (which came about a month after we made the decision to move) didn’t shake our confidence a little. We hadn’t planned on working and schooling from this smaller home. We hadn’t envisioned cooking at home more than ever in the smallest kitchen we’d ever owned. And we had planned on adding a second bathroom to this home right away (but have since decided to put that on hold, because a lot of what we assumed would be pain points in this smaller house actually weren’t!)
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our upstairs family room is the largest, followed by our downstairs kitchen/dining/sitting area). Had we made the upstairs room into our bedroom, we would’ve been claiming the largest room in the house as our own personal spot to sleep, which just doesn’t feel efficient at all in a smaller home (our bedrooms are the smallest three rooms in the house, with the exception of the bathroom, which works really well for us).
our wide front porch and upstairs deck, which provide a ton of additional space to escape to. I often take my laptop out to the table on the upstairs deck to do some work or make some calls, and I have to tell you, I’ve never had a better office view. Speaking of the outdoors…
Spending More Time Outside
It’ll be hard to articulate what a positive change this has been to our daily lives, but I’m so glad we made being outside one of our goals with this move. We knew we were choosing a location with a climate that would encourage us to spend more time outdoors (even in November we’re getting mostly 70ºF days) but I don’t think we expected that the landscape would also draw us outside as much as it does here.
Not only do we have the beach just a few blocks away (it’s a three-minute walk), we’ve also got lots of wooded trails and paved pathways around us too – all of which give us access to parks, playgrounds, shops, restaurants, other neighborhoods, etc. So we have LOTS of good excuses to get some fresh air.
Owning Less Stuff
We had already been enjoying the benefits (I almost said “thrill” there, ha!) of paring down and decluttering for a few years now, so we didn’t really expect any surprises, but one thing we’ve both noticed is that we don’t really lose stuff here. Like if we’re looking for a certain piece of clothing or tool or toy, we know exactly where to find it.
There are probably two reasons for this, and one is just a function of moving. Since we’ve packed, unpacked, and organized every single thing we own, our memory of where things are is pretty fresh.
12 that we have here). So when we had those cabinets and closets in all corners of our house, we filled them with things. And over time it became harder to remember what was where.
Maybe we’ll be singing a different tune in a few months as time has fogged our memory of unpacking & organizing within an inch of our lives (that’s really a huge part of downsizing: finding a smart spot for everything). But for now, it certainly feels like having less space to spread things out & stash extra stuff is keeping us a lot more organized. Plus, without lots of spare space to store things, it forces us to be really thoughtful about what we’re buying and adding to our belongings.
Spending Less Money
Let’s talk money! We’ve always considered ourselves to be pretty frugal, but there were moments over the last couple of years where we didn’t feel that way. Particularly when we were in the midst of renovating the duplex, furnishing the beach house, and paying for insurance, utilities, and taxes for four different homes (remember, the duplex = two attached houses). Life suddenly felt very full of bills!
So a big part of what helped sell us both on the idea of downsizing was that we could cut down on our bills and put a stop to paying for all of this space that wasn’t being used all the time. We talked all about the big money question everyone was asking us back in May on the podcast (the money side of ), but just last week I crunched some other numbers for the first time and it was kind of mind-blowing. So I wanted to talk about three other areas that we’re seeing a big difference: utilities, landscaping, and gas (like for our car).
Utilities
Let’s start with some utility costs because they’re some of the most obvious savings that people seek when they downsize. Keep in mind, these numbers represent going from paying to heat/cool/have lights on/have water/have internet for 7,000 square feet (across 4 houses) to all of those things in just 1,400 square feet (our current house), so they’re extra dramatic, and likely a lot more than you might see going from one house to one smaller house. This downsizing thing really made a huge quantifiable difference for us:
Landscaping
In addition to reducing our interior space, we also cut down big time on the exterior spaces that we have to maintain. Our lot in Richmond was a little under an acre of land, and we spent a whole bunch of time & money mowing, seeding, fertilizing, irrigating, mulching, & leaf-blowing it each year. We did basically all of it ourselves for many years, but over the last couple of years started hiring out certain tasks (like having someone mow it while we spent the summer in Cape Charles so it didn’t turn into a jungle).
In turn, we also had to pay someone to mow the yards at our beach house and duplex whenever we weren’t there to take care of that ourselves. Much like bills, it felt like the mowing never stopped. And the mulching, the seeding, and the leaf blowing. In fact, last year we spent about $3,750 on lawn care alone across all four houses (that also includes a few big leaf pickups along with all that mowing, and a huge delivery of mulch that we’d get annually for our various garden beds along with grass seed to reseed things ourselves in the fall, etc).
here). So while we have spent some money on new plantings, tree trimming, and fresh pine needles, it’s nowhere close to the ongoing money we had been shelling out to maintain three yards back in Virginia.
Gas
This one is less about having downsized and more about where we downsized to. As I mentioned above, we sought out a place that was extremely walkable so that we could reach shops, restaurants, parks, and the beach without getting in our car. We lucked out in finding a spot that met that criteria and, apart from big trips to the grocery store (for more bags than we could carry home), or longer trips to a big box store (like Target), we have tons of stuff we can get to on foot or by bike.
A Quick Money Disclaimer
I’ll wrap up this money section with a quick disclaimer that this move isn’t saving us money in every aspect of life. One thing that has ended up being more expensive here is food (oh how we miss Aldi! But there’s a rumor one is coming, so Sherry’s basically holding her breath for that) but with such big savings in other areas like the ones outlined above, it’s definitely an overwhelmingly positive change. I will say that it’s definitely worth doing a bit more research before assuming that all of your bills will go down just by moving to a smaller house – especially if that house is in a new area.
So, What Are The Challenges Of Downsizing?
Earlier I said there have been two things about downsizing that I’d characterize as challenges, not because they’re insurmountable (they’re not) but simply because they require some active work and attention on an ongoing basis. But like… so do lots of other worthwhile things (kids, relationships, plants, maybe crystals? Don’t you have to talk nicely to those?). So neither of these things are deal-breakers in the least – and they’re both things that you completely adjust to over time, but I’m always a fan of being thorough (hence how long this post has become). So here we go:
#1. Bulk Storage Space Is Nonexistent
When you have just the space that you use and need – it’s great! You don’t spend time heating and cooling a room you don’t use, or money filling it with furniture that you never sit on (like our rarely used dining room in our last house that mostly just became a holding area for stuff we had to bring to the duplex or beach house – or things that we wanted to donate). That being said, in our much smaller home without extra rooms… there is zero space to dump things that you want to deal with later.
I’m not gonna lie. Sometimes you just want a guest room or a garage to put stuff that you want to fix up or donate or sort later, and that isn’t possible here. In our last house I also mentioned that we had a large two-car garage, a huge walk-up attic (seen below – it was GIANT!), as well as a large, detached shed. All of which were full of things at one point. FULL OF THEM.
painted our kitchen cabinets, which offset all of those cooking items into other spaces (mainly our bedroom) and it really wasn’t that bad. I like to think that we have way less in this house, so offsetting any of it won’t be as bad, because we’ve pared back so much already.
#2 – It’s Constant Upkeep
This is extremely related to the last challenge we listed, but it bears mentioning that you don’t just downsize once and you’re done. It’s a constant thing that you maintain, often with just a few minutes a day, but it is something to be aware of. It’s a choice you make, and then continue to keep making because you don’t want your house to become overrun with things that get in the way of living life.
It’s a phenomenon that we lovingly call “immediate processing” – something comes into the house, and it needs a place to go. Immediately. Because as we previously mentioned, there’s no “put all the random things to be dealt with later here” zone. The good news is that it doesn’t take tons of time every once in a while (like the old garage clean-up issue) because things never get that bad, but there is truly a necessary upkeep every day to stay on top of clutter and extra stuff. Even a pile of mail that comes in – you’re like… let’s deal with this right now!
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