In November of 2020, we published a post called “What’s It Like To Downsize” after living in our smaller home for 6 months. We covered a range of experiences – like the good things about moving to a smaller home (owning less stuff! saving money!) and some of its challenges, especially in the initial stages of downsizing (paring down! figuring out storage!). We still agree with everything in that post, but it had only been six months… and since it has now been over 4.5 years (!!!), we feel like we have a few more to add about the long-haul downsizing experience. Let’s get into it.
We used to live in a 3,150 sq. ft. home in suburban Richmond, Virginia
Now we live in a 1,400 sq. ft. home a few blocks from the Gulf of Mexico
We have 6 rooms (including just 1 bathroom)
Our current house’s lot is 1/10th the size of our last house’s lot
We don’t have a garage, attic, or basement (but we do have a pool/hot tub/firepit)
We wanted a house that’s “walkable” & can now walk to shops/restaurants/the beach
Our family downsizing motto has been to “live with less & be outside more” (alternative motto: “spend less time cleaning & more time in the pool”)
After 4.5 years, we can still confidently say that downsizing was a great decision for us. We devote a lot less time, money, and energy into homeownership (maintenance, renovation, furnishing, cleaning) than ever before – which has freed us up to focus on family, hobbies, nature, and a better work-life balance. Financially it has also been beneficial (we made a whole chart about saving $$$, because although our house is in a warmer location, it’s a lot easier to heat & cool). You can see that breakdown in our original downsizing recap.
We’ve also had our current home longer than ourfirst house, our second house, our beach house, or our duplex at this point (time is wild!). So our downsized lifestyle is hardly a “blip” and we certainly would have changed things by now if it wasn’t a good fit.
So what new advice do we have after nearly 5 years of downsized life? The two things that come to mind are somewhat contradictory thoughts, so bear with me as I explain.
It’s easy to forget you downsized
It’s easy to be reminded you downsized
And yes, these are both more about the mental side of downsizing, but it’s a funny phenomenon that others who have downsized have also seemed to experience (we love talking to neighbors & friends who also moved from larger homes to smaller ones by the beach).
Forgetting You Downsized
Most days it’s easy to forget that we ever lived with (or believed we needed) more space. We’ve lived in this house long enough to fully adjust (both mentally and logistically) to having 1400 square feet. What once felt like an “unconventional” or “different” lifestyle change feels normal and unremarkable. So much so that it’s a little difficult to write this post. We’ve become a little blind to what’s interesting or unique about it!
So why do we draw attention to the “forgettableness” of downsizing? Well, for a couple of reasons.
1. Transitions Are Temporary
First, we hope this reassures anyone facing a similar transition, whether by choice or not. Downsizing can feel challenging at times, but the challenges don’t last forever. Because just like any transition in life – going to college, starting a job, having a baby – the adjustment period is often the hardest part. So let us be an example that, at some point, you’ll be on the other side. You will adjust.
That’s not to say the adjustment is always fast or easy. And different parts may be difficult for different people. We enjoyed paring down our belongings, so that part wasn’t too rough for us (dare I say, exciting?). But after moving into our smaller home, it took us 2-3 years to:
figure out furniture arrangements in a few trickier spaces
So there was an initial “sticking point” in finding the best way to store certain things (or a literal waiting period while we built the storage cabinets or closets that we needed). But now that we’ve figured those things out, everything has a place to live, and it’s a lot more autopilot around here. In fact, if pressed to recall what we struggled with storing or what took the longest to figure out, it might take a 10-minute brainstorming session to actually remember.
2. It Was The Right Move For Us
Secondly (and more personally), the “forgettableness” of our decision tells us we did the right thing. Downsizing isn’t for everyone, so the fact that it has become so normalized for our family is immensely reassuring. We still have people over (our pool & proximity to the beach is a real draw). We spend a lot more time outside as a family. We clean the house together every Sunday in about 30 minutes (all 4 of us have our fav jobs). Six rooms total (and only one bathroom) really have a plethora of upsides.
That’s not to say we don’t sometimes feel the limitations of a smaller home (here is where I would argue that limitations aren’t always bad – like do we want a house with enough space to store literally *anything* we have ever wanted?).
To pick an example of a storage limitation, a few years ago Sherry wanted a few of those 6′ skeletons to hang from our second floor deck each Halloween. She proposed storing them in the crawl space (which could have worked – although skeletons under the house might be a little creepy if someone ever came upon them during an inspection or something). After some thought, Sherry ended up getting four smaller skeletons that fold at the waist and can easily be stored in a basket inside. The kids get a kick out of repositioning them every October (rain chain Miley-Cyrus-In-Wreckingball scenes have been created) so there is no shortage of joy, and it hasn’t ever really felt like a “sacrifice.” You adjust. You pivot. All is ok.
Actually, there’s a peace that comes with a resolute “nope, it won’t fit in our house” that helps us walk away from lots of things without much internal debate (and with money remaining in our pocket). Also, lots of people live without 6-foot skeletons… which is kinda the point. The longer we live here, the less frequently we let our space limitations distract from the positives of downsizing. It’s just a fact of life that we’re happy to live with in exchange for the other things we’ve gained.
Being Reminded You Downsized
Like I said before, this next section sounds like a direct contradiction to everything I just said. How can it be easy to forget we downsized… but also be regularly reminded of that fact? This interesting dichotomy just seems to be a part of downsizing, so I thought I’d attempt to put it into words for anyone who’s contemplating a downsizing adventure.
Since the day-to-day of living in a smaller home over the last 4.5 years has become so normalized to us, there are funny little moments when we’re reminded that our decision isn’t everyone’s norm. One of those funny reminders might be when another person asks us about downsizing and says they could never live without their guest room & their double garage (we usually chat about how downsizing definitely isn’t for everyone – and each person has different things they couldn’t live without).
Sometimes it’s just this moment of being in a larger home while visiting a friend and noticing they have 12 closets or a giant laundry room. It’s not a bad sensation – it’s just a noticeable moment of “oh yeah, some people have all this room! I wonder if they think our house is weird, even though we’re so used to it.”
To take this one step further, comparison is a near-universal truth of homeownership, whether you’re comparing your home to a house across the street or a home that’s featured on the internet or in a magazine. This isn’t specific to downsizing AT ALL. I’m sure many of you in larger homes have envied someone’s even more spacious house at some point. And you may even have felt a pang of yearning for a smaller and more simple home, but don’t actually want to live in one. It can just be a little momentary feeling.
My main point here is that lots of little desires or yearnings can exist at once in your mind, and those momentary pangs don’t mean you hate what you already have or must change things. Insert that quote about the grass always being greener. So if you’re thinking about downsizing, it would be smart to take stock of how these comparisons really make you feel over a longer period of time (fleeting desires aside).
If you’re someone who can say “that’s so cool for them, but I don’t think I’d want to clean those four extra rooms” – you might really be ready (and excited!) to downsize. But if seeing those grander homes stirs up some kind of burning desire (versus being a passing moment of “woah, they have a theater room!”), maybe take some time to dive deeper and ponder if downsizing actually feels right for you.
When we walk into giant open houses or showhomes, we are very happy to soak up all the inspiration & appreciate every detail and then happily return to our cozy little house. Touring these “bigger and better houses” is fun for us, and it’s also an exercise that reaffirms our choice every time.
Again, for us, living with less = needing less money = working/cleaning/maintaining/organizing less = more time for family/friends/hobbies/nature. There is a big “why” behind our choice. So seeing someone’s bigger/nicer house often becomes a good moment to savor the clarity we have around our goals. Is it beautiful? Yes. Is it worth spending more time maintaining it and working longer hours to afford it? Not for us.
I’m especially grateful for that clarity given the wide variety of homes around us. One unique thing about living here is the wide range of house sizes (and, shall we say, fancy-factor?). The homes in all of our previous neighborhoods were relatively the same. Some might have a newer kitchen or bathroom, a finished attic, or an addition on the back, but the differences usually weren’t more than a renovation away from the house next door.
In our current area, however, the range is truly WILD. You can find lavish & large waterfront homes worth eight figures just a short walk away. Every day we see everything from little cottages like ours to towering multi-family vacation homes. Thankfully that wide range doesn’t make us second-guess anything about our decision to downsize. But I imagine it would be harder to handle if we felt like our house really was too small and we were squeezed in there like sardines while those around us had all that room and then some.
All this to say, I would not choose a neighborhood like ours if you’re prone to house-size envy or if you worry you’ll second-guess your decision to downsize. Sherry and I actually enjoy that our house “stands out” in our neighborhood as being one of just around two dozen “original cottages” that were built earlier on when our streets were sleepy and slow (it’s a great conversation starter!). But I think a younger me who was less sure in my choices might’ve preferred to blend in and keep up with the Joneses a little more. I think that would’ve made this process more difficult. So… know thyself.
Would We Still Choose Downsizing?
If it isn’t already glaringly obvious, YES!
In the almost half a decade since making this choice, we’ve only grown more steadfast in our decision. We were so focused on the logistical and financial aspects of downsizing in our earlier downsizing recap, I don’t think we had really digested these mental aspects enough to explain them. We were also only 6 months in, and very much loving our new home, new location, and new lifestyle – but it would not have been easy to see it from as wide of a lens as we can today.
And now, 4.5 years after downsizing, any sort of honeymoon period that may have occurred is over and we’re still very happily married to it. We’re amazed by how normalized it has become to us, and how easy it is to brush off any “temptations” around us. Sherry says that like getting tattoos, paring down and simplifying is addicting. Except I guess when it comes to the occasional jonesing for large skeletons. But even that can turn out ok…
More Posts About Downsizing
Want to read more about our experience downsizing to a smaller home?
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Those who live in small apartments and not-so-luxurious buildings know that in-unit laundry is an amenity worth serious consideration. Sure, maybe there’s no elevator, and your work commute is longer than you’d like it to be, but at least you don’t have to haul heavy bags of dirty clothes to a laundromat. If we’re being honest, though, as far as drying your linens and apparel, you’re often better off avoiding machines that generate high heat. Repeated cycles through the dryer can end up damaging the fibers in the long run, so nine times out of 10, hanging your wet items is the way to go.
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Now, I know what you’re thinking: Small space, remember? If you’re in a studio or one-bedroom, there’s hardly enough room to set up a full-sized drying rack, let alone drape freshly washed towels, bedding, and bulky garments. But as far as bed sheets go, we found something on Amazon that achieves the best of both worlds. The WAIKAS spiral sheet hanger lets your linens fully air-dry while also saving space.
There’s not much to explain regarding this product’s design and function. It’s essentially a hanger, but instead of the sloped form you use for jackets, it unwinds in a circular pattern. With a diameter of nearly 17 inches, the spiral is able to fit most standard-sized sheets — namely, fulls and Queens according to customer reviews. All you have to do is fold your flat sheet in half and slide it onto the outer end of the spiral, then loop it inward until all the fabric is hanging securely. Then just hook the hanger in your closet, on the shower rod, or on a clothesline outside, and wait a few hours. In the meantime, you won’t be stepping around the entire width of the sheet or fussing over where to place the rest of your clean laundry.
Thanks to its stainless steel frame, each hanger is surprisingly strong, and Amazon shoppers have no qualms about its durability. “These are perfect for our larger items that need drying,” one reviewer wrote. “I worried that they might not be sturdy enough for sheets, but I had some damp towels to try and figured they would be heavier than bedsheets… It did not sag or bend from the weight of the damp towel.” When your linens are done drying, you can separate the spiral from the hook for easier storage. So why wait? Grab your own spiral hangers now — at just $15 for a pack of two, there’s nothing to think about.
We independently select these products—if you buy from one of our links, we may earn a commission. All prices were accurate at the time of publishing.
Yes, I’m essentially a professional shopper, but I’m still constantly amazed by the inventions that brands (and independent makers) come up with to simplify housekeeping, save space, and look good doing it. Yamazaki has been at the forefront of so many of these innovations for years, but the brand just continues to raise the bar. As part of its Tower collection, these Magnetic Spray Bottles practically disappear into even the most minimalist home decor schemes while allowing you to save counter, shelf, and cabinet space at the same time.
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This $12 spray bottle, available in matte black or white, holds your decanted cleaning solutions — be they for laundry stain removal or countertop disinfecting — and adheres (damage-free!) to any magnetic surface, from your dishwasher and refrigerator to your washer and dryer. Keeping these spray bottles at the ready, wherever you frequently use liquid cleaning formulations, means staying on top of regular tidying sessions, quickly addressing stain emergencies, and dedicating fewer weekends to deep-cleaning marathons.
Of course, the Magnetic Spray Bottles can be used for so much more than just cleaning. Try keeping your cooking oils in them, perhaps with some cool, custom labeling, and attach them to your fridge or oven border for easy access and quick, even application when you’re getting ready to sauté or bake. When you go to mix up your perfect salad dressing each week, why not keep it in a Yamazaki spray bottle attached to the inside of your fridge, saving shelf space and mason jars for other things? You can get as creative with the Magnetic Spray Bottles as you want.
As someone partial to decanting everything into attractive, uniform containers, I’m this close to buying 10 of these spray bottles myself, scattering them across my home, and having my cleaning solutions, air fresheners, and kitchen ingredients handy at all times.
Sherry’s post a few months ago about what furniture & decor we still own after downsizing was the first time I’d looked back at photos of our previous house in a while. It was a fun walk down memory lane (how has it been 2.5 years since we moved?!). It also jogged my memory about how much “extra house” we used to have. As in, full rooms that were so under-utilized that I’d almost forgotten about them!
Don’t get me wrong: we loved that house. But, as you know, it was a much bigger house than we realized we needed (spending an entire summer in our smaller pink beach house really clarified that for us – more on that here), and we were excited & relieved to downsize to our current home in Florida. We went from 3,150 square feet in Virginia to 1,400 square feet here – which is less than half the space, for the math nerds out there.
Some rooms here are just smaller than their Virginia counterparts, but we also have full rooms that are just totally missing (we went from 3 bathrooms to 1, and no longer have things like a garage, a home office, a dining room, etc). And over the past 2.5 years of living here in our smaller home (through a global pandemic, which resulted in an entire year of at-home learning in our smaller space!) we’ve definitely put having fewer rooms to the test. And since it has been a few years, and we’ve gotten along so well without them, I thought it’d be interesting to see which ones we don’t miss (and the ones that we do miss).
6 Rooms Versus 14 Rooms
Simply put, our current home has six rooms. A multifunctional room downstairs that has a kitchen on one side and a sitting area on the other, three bedrooms, a bathroom, and a multi-functional family room upstairs that serves as a TV room/office/crafting area/playspace. Here they are:
If you want to read more about those rooms and see more photos of each one, I’ve linked them below for you:
We’re lucky to also have a large upstairs deck, two porches, a pool area, and other outdoor spaces that give us a lot more room to spread out (and thanks to it being nice outside nearly year-round here, they get a lot of use!). But as for conditioned indoor rooms, those six spaces are it! We do have a laundry closet in the kitchen and a small hallway that joins some of the rooms, but those don’t count as actual rooms by any standard I’ve ever heard of.
Note: a grand hallway with actual furniture in it – like an entry foyer, can definitely count as a room (for example, our last house’s foyer had an entry table, a chandelier, and two of its own closets within that approximately 12′ x 12′ room – so the real estate listing for that house listed it as a room and included its measurements).
Speaking of our last house, let’s compare the FOURTEEN rooms we had there:
That’s a difference of 8 rooms – not including unconditioned spaces – so there’s definitely a noticeable difference between the two houses. A funny side note is that our Richmond house also had a GIANT walk-up attic (as large as the entire first floor of the house), a two-car garage, and a large outdoor shed, which are 3 other spaces that we don’t have in our current house.
Those three spots could hold a ton of stuff, so along with going down by 8 rooms, we also downsized those extra storage spaces! That’s actually something I’m really proud that we could accomplish. We used to have SO MUCH CRAP in the attic and the garage felt like we constantly needed to clean it out.
The Rooms We *Don’t* Missing Having
First, a quick disclaimer: different people obviously have different needs and wants from their homes. People often ask us about “our downsizing journey” (please say that with drama and emotion like every person on Love Island says “our relationship journey”) and we’re happy to talk about how things have gone for us, but we’re the first to admit that every human on earth will have different experiences, opinions, and outcomes.
The point of this list is just to share our thought process, which might help you determine what your “must have” spaces are if you’re house hunting, renovating, or maybe just rethinking the function of a spare room in your house. And if you’re thinking about downsizing, this might give you some hope that you’ll be fine without a [insert room you’ve always had here].
Also, we’re not writing this to suggest that you demolish a certain room or feel bad about having it. Lots of these rooms are vital in certain homes and households and, even if not, there’s nothing wrong with a room simply being “nice to have” either. Heck, we lived in our too-big-for-us house for 7 years before we made the move here! So maybe your spare bedroom is good for resale, that extra powder room was fun to decorate, or that basement gym is great for storing fifty-two boxes of holiday decorations. We definitely filled our attic TO THE GILLS. We have been there and we get it.
When we finally got to the place where we were excited (and then extremely relieved) to downsize, we also knew it would involve some sacrifices and compromises compared to our previous home. Honestly what this list showed us upon further reflection is how many of them haven’t felt like sacrifices in the long run! That really was the surprise from this hindsight analysis.
Don’t Miss: A Foyer
Longtime followers might be surprised by this because we sometimes bemoaned the lack of a foyer in our first two homes. Both were small brick ranches where the front door opened right into the living room. So having a proper entryway in our last house had felt like we’d FINALLY MADE IT. We were fancy people with a foyer!
But looking back on it, that room feels like wasted square footage because we basically never used the front door (we always came through the garage) so the foyer was just extra space to pass through on our way to other rooms. And even though we’re back to that door-swings-right-into-living-area scenario here, it honestly hasn’t bothered us. It’s like you always long for something, finally get it, and realize it’s fine but not a deal-breaker if it went away again.
It definitely took some time to figure out a furniture layout that works around the front door, but we’re really happy with how it’s turned out. We even have some nice functional storage for coats and backpacks right when you walk in, thanks to the adjacent laundry closet (the kids were at school when we took this photo, but their backpacks hang on those lower hooks on the laundry closet door).
Ultimately, while we still see the value of a foyer in some homes – even just for the “fancy factor” of having one for a nice dramatic first impression – we’ve learned that we’d personally prioritize a functional entryway with storage. For example, if given the choice between a grand open foyer or a basic front door with room for a small mudroom closet or backpack dropzone behind a door, we’d choose the latter. In our case, we chose a super hardworking laundry closet and a nice open feeling in the living area instead of boxing out a formal foyer.
Don’t Miss: A Laundry Room
Again, this might come as a surprise considering we worked very hard to create a laundry room from scratch in our last house (we stole space from our unfinished attic). We even went all out with a marble backsplash and under-cabinet lighting to make it the most tricked-out laundry space we’ve ever owned.
In retrospect, it was definitely more laundry space than we needed. Going into it, we pictured LOVING the option to throw haphazard piles of to-be-washed items on the floor, shut the door, and let it be our little dirty secret. Or maybe enjoying some peace-and-quiet while we folded or ironed clothes in here.
But none of that ever really happened. Clothes never made a pit stop in here, apart from time spent in the actual washer or dryer (they were in our hampers before – and folded on the bed in our room after). Maybe if we had more kids, busier sports schedules, or bigger wardrobes (you know Sherry loves a minimal closet) we’d have found ourselves needing this spacious secluded laundry zone at the end of a long upstairs hallway. But for our family, having the laundry so out-of-sight actually ended up being a sticking point. We were constantly forgetting we had any laundry running because it was at the very end of this long hallway tucked behind a door (in both former houses it was a lot closer to more bustling areas of our home like the kitchen and we rarely forgot laundry thanks to that proximity).
In many ways, our new laundry setup is ideal for our habits. It’s right in the middle of the house in a closet within our kitchen/downstairs living area, which makes it extremely convenient to everyone’s bedrooms and it greatly cuts down on forgotten loads. But it’s still roomy enough that we have a counter for pre-treating stains, a basket for wrangling too-be-washed items that might be on deck for the next load, and floor space for standing without being totally in the way.
And because it’s still behind closed doors, it doesn’t have to be kept pristine AND it cuts down on the laundry noise remarkably well. It’s funny also to realize that in our first two houses, we only ever had laundry closets or nooks with a stackable washer/dryer – and never really had a big dedicated room with cabinetry and tile and all that jazz like we had in our last house. But once again, I think it was a case of “eh, we had it and it was nice, but we’re just fine without it.” Basically when you downsize you choose your priorities and your house can’t have everything because then it would just be huge.
Don’t Miss: The Dining Room
This probably comes as no surprise to most people, considering how much “formal” dining rooms have fallen out of favor with many families. We also spoke often about how rarely we used this room. We usually ate family dinners at our kitchen island, so this was mostly just a dumping ground for packages and to-be-dealt-with boxes that we occasionally cleaned up if guests were coming over.
Now we only have one indoor dining spot: the table in our kitchen (which can seat as many as 8 people if we pull it out, which we’ve done quite a few times). As a family, we have learned that we MUCH prefer eating at a table facing each other, so this is a big improvement from sitting on higher stools all staring out in a line at our old kitchen island.
One obvious downside to this is that it’s a far cry from a “formal” setup, so if you love hosting dinner parties, this might not suffice. We’ve never been big formal entertainers (we like a casual set-out-the-chips-and-salsa game night or an order-pizza-or-BBQ-burgers dinner party), so it wasn’t a concern to ditch our dining room. These days if we have people over, we tend to gather outside anyways. We often eat out by the pool, where we have a nice big table with an umbrella that also seats 8.
Don’t Miss: The Bonus Room
As the name implies, this room was “extra” space in our last house that we created by finishing the attic over our garage. After our kitchen, it was the biggest room in the house and it acted as a movie/TV room + playroom + crafting space. So it’s funny to think such a multifunctional room falls into the “don’t miss” category. But wait – there is a clear reason why we don’t miss it that we’ll get to in a second.
Converting this unfinished space on our second floor into conditioned usable square footage was partly because it just made sense for the house (it already had HVAC set up, so all it really needed was drywall to be a functional room – plus we still had a full unfinished walk-up attic on the 3rd floor for storage). And making this a bonus room appealed to us because we thought a secondary living space that was designed with the kids in mind would be nice. You know, a fun space to corral everyone’s kids when we had people over, a room that could be messy upstairs but you just ignore it downstairs, and a spot for cozy family movie nights.
Funnily enough, the reasons we liked that bonus room are the very same reasons we love our family room in this smaller house! It’s an upstairs secondary living space that’s designed with our kids in mind, so they can leave it messy, hang out with their friends while the adults hang out downstairs, and we can all pile in for a family movie night. Note: we count our small downstairs sitting area & kitchen as our primary living space because we all spend even more time in that eating/cooking/hangout zone downstairs than we do up here, but it’s pretty close. Six rooms = you use them all, a lot.
Layout tip: in a small house, having two large living spaces that aren’t right next to each other is really what makes this house feel like it lives LARGE. We routinely have a ton of kids up here hanging out and all of the adults downstairs relaxing in the kitchen/sitting area, and thanks to one being an entire floor above the other, the kids don’t hear every convo we have downstairs, and we don’t hear whatever movie they’re watching or game they’re playing. It is great.
Just like our last house’s bonus room, our upstairs family room here has a TV, an art desk, and open floor space for games & crafts. Things have changed a bit now that our kids are older (we added that bonus room 6 years ago), so we don’t experience blocks and stuffed animals all over the floor like before. But this room still sees its fair share of messes in the form of crafting explosions or board game marathons – all of which end up on the floor – which is another reason we’re glad it’s upstairs and out of sight. Just like our former bonus room!
So in the end, the reason we don’t miss the “bonus room” room is that we still sort of have it, just by another name. And ours works even harder here because it also has an office space tucked into it. Speaking of which…
Missed It At First: The Office
As two people who work from home, one concern when buying this house was not having a dedicated room for a home office. In our last house we had converted the formal living room into a large workspace for both of us, so we knew that downsizing to a room without a dedicated home office was going to be a big change.
The difference felt especially challenging right after we moved, thanks to COVID throwing virtual learning onto our plates. For an entire year, all four of us ate almost every meal at home, worked & did school five days a week from this house, etc. I mean: nothing puts a house to the test like that. And I’m happy to report that we made it work, but it definitely wasn’t the most productive time of our lives (I’m sure lots of people would say the same thing). This was the setup right after we moved. It was… not ideal.
The funny thing is that it wasn’t all that different from what we had going on in our last house’s home office (those two tiny chairs were the kids desk and the floating desk about four feet away was Sherry’s).
… but with kids at home all day long trying to do school while we attempted to work. Yeah, you guys know what that’s like. Thankfully, that wasn’t the setup for long – and many days actually looked like me in the bedroom on a work call with the kids upstairs doing school (or one/both of them in their own rooms so they could focus a little more on something), and Sherry working down at the kitchen table or locked in our bedroom for a differently timed zoom meeting or conference call.
Things got much better as the room evolved and the kids went back to school, and the desk space we carved out is hands down my favorite “home office” I’ve ever worked from (I’m typing from here right now and I have the whole room to myself!). You just can’t beat all that natural light and the view out of that big window.
I’ve also switched back to a laptop so I can work outside on the upstairs deck (which I do often) or even on the kitchen porch, like you see below.
Meanwhile, Sherry typically works downstairs at the kitchen table or even outside by the pool with her laptop, so in 2.5 years we definitely have figured out what works for us and love having such a flexible setup. It is occasionally inconvenient not having a dedicated, quiet space for work (like during the summer when the kids are home), but we never had a door on our old office, so we’re no strangers to being interrupted by kids or visitors. And just like we did in our last house – if we need a fully quiet space we just take the laptop into our bedroom and close the door. We even have a table in there by the fireplace, so it’s not a bad setup.
Do Not Miss: The Garage
Sherry and I debated where to put the garage on this list because every once in a while I think of a garage fondly, just due to how convenient it was, but I’ll explain why we ultimately both voted: don’t miss. Sherry has an actual hatred for our last garage and is so glad we don’t have one anymore just due to how much time we spent cleaning it out and dealing with it being full of crap all the time, so it wasn’t a surprise that she voted that way. But my feelings were a bit more layered.
We’re generally very tidy, organized people. But for some reason, garages, sheds, attics, etc have always been our Kryptonite. Our Monica’s Closet, if you will. Every single time we spent days cleaning and organizing it and promised ourselves we wouldn’t let it get that bad again… it did. So the reason we don’t miss a garage is just that we’re extremely grateful we are no longer in that super frustrating loop of not keeping our promise to ourselves and spending yet another weekend cleaning the freaking garage.
Not having a garage or a garage-like space has actually forced us into much better habits. We deal with boxes and to-be-donated stuff right away (out to the car it goes). We don’t collect secondhand furniture with as much abandon (Sherry’s still a fan of the curbside find, but only if we immediately have a need/spot for it). And not having a garage has spared us from having to dedicate weekends to big garage clean-outs and, more importantly, the general shame we constantly felt about the state of our garage. It was an everyday sticking point that we never solved. And now, we’ve solved it by not having one.
The simple reason I very occasionally look back on a garage fondly is that it’s nice to have a covered enclosed space to store things like bikes and our car. Here I really just would like it for bike storage. Our car is out in the open and it’s completely fine, but we use bikes here much more than we did in Virginia, and having a wet seat from them sitting out isn’t amazing (weirdly, it’s how basically everyone stores their bikes here: all lined up outside). It would be simple enough to make a covered little alcove for our bikes somewhere in the yard with a big piece of tin on posts or something. Even easier, I just discovered these bike seat covers – and our seats aren’t wet anymore. So I think Sherry is 100% right. We cannot be trusted not to fill a garage with crap. We have unlocked entire weekends spent at the beach & our pool that otherwise would have been spent cleaning a garage if we had one. So I’m certain that in the long run it’s a win for us not to have one.
But lest you think we’re fully cured… we DO have a small shed on the side of our house that we use for tools, yard equipment, and other miscellaneous stuff. It’s about the size of a port-o-potty, so we can’t really stuff tons of things inside… but I’m only showing you the outside of it because – TRUE TO FORM! – it’s currently a mess inside.
Sometimes Miss: Our Ensuite Bathroom
This may come as a surprise since we’ve put our plans to add a second bathroom to this house on indefinite hold (we just don’t feel squeezed for one at all yet – and embarking on an expensive reno when the current setup has worked fine for years now just doesn’t feel like the best use of money or time). So while we actually don’t miss having an ensuite bathroom, we just sometimes miss THIS specific bathroom from our last house.
And I think that’s mostly because we didn’t have much time to enjoy the finished product before we moved. We gleefully finished the bathroom and only got to enjoy it for about 3 months before we had a Florida zip code.
The timing certainly wasn’t perfect, but it was a small casualty for making the more rewarding lifestyle change of downsizing to a warmer and more walkable home near the beach. Looking back at those photos, I think we just wish we had renovated the bathroom MUCH SOONER (we lived in this house for 7 years, almost all of which were spent with the unrenovated bathroom that you see in the before photos here).
The Trade-Offs Of Downsizing
Missing that grand bathroom of yore is a prime example of reminding ourselves that we made intentional trade-offs by downsizing. Yes, we no longer have a big fancy marble bathroom. Instead, we have this beautiful space to take an open-air shower in the sunlight (and an actual indoor shower too). True story: we all shower outside around 90% of the year – it’s our favorite spot with the sun streaming down and a whole lotta plants.
Actually, a ton of downsizing is just trading something for something else. We live a few blocks from the beach (we can walk there in 3 minutes!) but we all share a bathroom. We don’t have a garage, but we have a big second-floor deck up in the trees. Our kitchen is about 1/3 the size of the one at our last house, but there’s a grocery store, restaurants, and ice cream shops within walking distance. Our internet isn’t always reliable (seriously it’s sloth-slow sometimes) but we have a pool that we can swim in year-round and a firepit for s’mores. We have a lot less square footage than we used to, but it’s easier to clean and more affordable to heat & cool. You can read more about the entire process of downsizing (it wasn’t all roses!) and that whole tradeoff concept here on our about page.
And if you’d like to read other posts we’ve shared about downsizing over the last 2.5 years, these are packed with info:
Also, if you have any questions about wall colors or where we got certain items in the photos within this post,this post has all the source info for our current house, and this post has all the source info about our last house.
Sarah writes about all things shopping for Apartment Therapy, The Kitchn, and Cubby helping you find the best deals and the best products for you and your home. A Brooklyn-born Jersey Girl, she loves a good playlist, a good bagel, and her family (but not necessarily in that order).
