Sunday, August 18, 2019

Time To Scale Down

In 2003 our four bedroom house was bursting at the seams. Then one by one the boys graduated from high school and left for college or the work world. They'd come home for summers and visits, and Son Donald boomeranged back for a couple of years before he left again in 2016. Since that time it's been me, Hubby Tony, and the two cats.

The dining room became a good place for Tony to store his current project paperwork. My spot was the floor of the smallest bedroom. The cats enjoyed having a variety of beds to choose from, depending on the time of day and their mood. Often when I would vacuum the living room on Sunday I'd see evidence of last week's vacuuming because no one had walked over the area.

Since Son Tony left the nest Hubby Tony and I have talked about moving "when the time was right". It never was. Then one day several weeks ago we started talking more seriously. We had a couple of realtors come out and give us their opinion on what it would take to get the house market-ready. We liked what we heard from the second one so after taking a day to think, pray, and talk about it we made the decision that now was the time We signed a contract this afternoon.

Now the hard part begins. Even though I don't consider myself a hoarder and I've done a couple of purges over the years, we've lived in this house for 26 years. There is a lot of stuff to go through! Guided by our realtor, we'll also have contractors come in to update some things. And Tony and I will keep busy to make sure every surface is sparkling.

And, of course, in the middle of all our work we need to find a new place to live. The broker we've signed with uses a team approach, with one agent handling the selling and another the buying process. We've had a preliminary discussion with the buying agent about where and what we want our next home to look like so he can start researching for us.

The whole thing is exciting and scary at the same time.

Five years ago today: Those Must Be Some Big Fairies!

12 comments:

  1. You are so organized Kathy, it is scary the thought of downsizing

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    1. It IS, but we decided we were up to the challenge.

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  2. That would be very scary to think of uprooting from the home niche for a new "territory".

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    1. I don't know exactly where we'll end up in the metropolitan area, but we're targeting cities relatively close to our current house. There would still be quite a bit of familiarity.

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  3. We went from 3800 square feet to 950. I thought I would miss all that space, but it was liberating to be free of so much "stuff"!

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    1. I had a great time today purging things I haven't used in years. I hope that continues.

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  4. Just as long as you have room for the grandkids to come stay with you during summer vacations!

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    1. Because of the distance between our house and theirs it will be quite a few years until that happens, but I plan on having at least one extra bed in our new place.

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  5. How exciting. Selling is as big an adventure as buying. Despair over nothing.

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