Baby Steps

So now that we’ve decided we want to make a change in our lifestyles, where to begin?

We don’t know much about how exactly we’re going to do this but we know a couple things for sure:

We want to have less stuff/house to take care of and we want to be mortgage/rent free.

We are extremely fortunate that we purchased this house nearly five years ago and paid less than half of what it’s worth now. The housing market is really what gave us this idea in the first place. What we gain back from the house sale will go to our next living arrangements.

The goal of being debt free will allow us to have less demanding jobs, giving us more time to focus on spending quality time doing what we love.

We could buy a smaller house or a condo. We always talked about living on a sailboat after a week-long bareboat charter back in 2014. We could buy a camper and travel for a while as we decide what kind of jobs we really need to support this new lifestyle. These are all the fun things to think about and distract from the arduous task at hand, downsizing.

A process that started by walking into each room of our 2,500 sq/ft house and surveying the books, mementos, tchotchkes and supplies for house projects we haven’t gotten around to yet. We found things we forgot we had. As we stood in silence making mental notes about just how big of an undertaking this is, I know we came to the same conclusion: we have too much stuff!

Three piles have been formed, including things we will want to take with us, things we need to get rid of and things we want to keep, such as yearbooks, photos and diplomas.

In our nearly 15 years of living together, we have moved into and out of 13 different homes. This house will be the 14^th. I know this number seems exorbitant, but it includes a number of summer rentals in college, seasonal rentals and a temporary apartment while we searched for a home to buy when we moved back to Florida. Until this house, we never had that much stuff because we moved so frequently. We’ve also never lived in any one place for this long.

We have a call into a realtor friend, who is actively running comparable home sales in our area and hope he sees the same recent sales we have seen. Fingers crossed that the finances work out.