So I left off with our home sold and moving day about a month away. Where to live? It turns out the place we spent a lot of our weekend time, The Shops at Legacy, a super popular shopping/entertainment district, was less than a mile from where K worked, and was just a block away from the Dallas North Tollway which was a straight shot to my work.
Over an eight-block-long stretch in The Shops there are about 25 restaurants, several clubs, a theater, and more. And best of all they had lots of adjacent apartments to choose from. We found a 2 bed/2 bath just a block away that seemed nice enough and was less than half what our home cost per month. Perfect! We were soon having so much fun we quickly put building another (smaller) home on the back burner.
But before we could move we had to face reality....much of our stuff wasn't coming with us. First off, everything upstairs had to find a new home. We gave some of it to our friends and family, sold some on Craig's List, and put the rest in a moving (garage) sale.
Clothes....Jeez....where'd all that stuff come from? I had 55 casual shirts. K asked me how many of them I had worn in the past 6 months? Twenty. That left 35 that went to charity. Same with shoes. Same with lots of old pants/jeans that...ahem...shrunk in the dryer.
I thought the hardest thing for me to part with would be the 500 hardcover volumes I'd collected over the years. K asked me if I ever went back and re-read any of them? Ummm....no. That meant I really had 500 dusty door stops. Some were given to friends and family, some were sold via Craig's List and in the moving sale, and the rest were sacrificed to Half Price Books. I kept a few that were signed by the authors or given to me by friends, but the rest are now being enjoyed by others. Turns out they weren't hard to part with at all. Now I read Kindle books on my tablet.
Fortunately as things turned out we didn't have any heirloom furniture. We had very good quality stuff, but it had no sentimental value. We kept what we needed and no more. Our HUGE dining table w/ 2 leaves, 6 chairs, and a sideboard was replaced by this...
....and it works for us just fine.
My GIANT oak roll top desk was eventually replaced by this much smaller one....
....and my tall oak file cabinet was condensed into this....
....which fits nicely in the closet.
Every nook and cranny is used for storage. The backside of most doors has been put to use....
In the spring, winter coats, hats, gloves, sweaters, etc are put into plastic boxes and stored under the bed and on the top shelf of closets and are replaced by summer shorts and T-shirts that had been put away the previous fall....
The apartment installed one shelf over the washer/dryer, but I added 2 more....
Need a rod to hang up clothes as they come out of the dryer? Improvise....
The Container Store became my best friend!
Unless you have a bunch of heirlooms or are auditioning for a roll on Hoarders, it really isn't that hard to downsize. In fact, it wasn't long before we found that second apartment bedroom turning into a catch-all room, tempting us all over again to collect more stuff we didn't need. The solution....downsize once more.
After three years in our first apartment we moved again into another newer, nicer, but even smaller one bedroom apartment.
We're now down to 850 sq ft and loving it.
The grounds are beautiful with a pool, gym, and 3 courtyards that I don't have to maintain! And if anything needs fixing (very rare) I just fire off an email to maintenance. They even change light bulbs!
Our downsizing adventure has been very worthwhile, the disadvantages being few and far between. "Apartment grade" is a far cry from "custom home", but if you're willing to check your ego at the door, it's a pretty sweet ride.
Another home for us some day? If I could replicate my carefree downsized/renter's lifestyle and still give my bride another (mini) mansion she could call hers, I'd be willing. Never say never. :)
S
