Sherry’s put up a number of months in the past about what furnishings & decor we nonetheless personal after downsizing was the primary time I’d regarded again at photographs of our earlier home shortly. It was a enjoyable stroll down reminiscence lane (how has it been 2.5 years since we moved?!). It additionally stroke a chord in my memory about how a lot “additional home” we used to have. As in, full rooms that had been so under-utilized that I’d nearly forgotten about them!

Don’t get me incorrect: we liked that home. However, as you realize, it was a a lot larger home than we realized we would have liked (spending a complete summer time in our smaller pink seashore home actually clarified that for us – extra on that right here), and we had been excited & relieved to downsize to our present dwelling in Florida. We went from 3,150 sq. toes in Virginia to 1,400 sq. toes right here – which is lower than half the area, for the mathematics nerds on the market.

Some rooms listed here are simply smaller than their Virginia counterparts, however we even have full rooms which might be simply completely lacking (we went from 3 loos to 1, and now not have issues like a storage, a house workplace, a eating room, and so forth). And over the previous 2.5 years of dwelling right here in our smaller dwelling (by way of a world pandemic, which resulted in a complete yr of at-home studying in our smaller area!) we’ve undoubtedly put having fewer rooms to the check. And because it has been a number of years, and we’ve gotten alongside so effectively with out them, I believed it’d be fascinating to see which of them we don’t miss (and those that we do miss).

6 Rooms Versus 14 Rooms

Merely put, our present dwelling has six rooms. A multifunctional room downstairs that has a kitchen on one facet and a sitting space on the opposite, three bedrooms, a rest room, and a multi-functional household room upstairs that serves as a TV room/workplace/crafting space/playspace. Right here they’re:

If you wish to learn extra about these rooms and see extra photographs of every one, I’ve linked them beneath for you:

1. The Kitchen/Sitting Space
2. Our Bed room
3. The Toilet
4. Our Daughter’s Bed room
5. Our Son’s Bed room
6. The Upstairs Household Room

We’re fortunate to even have a massive upstairs deck, two porches, a pool space, and different out of doors areas that give us much more room to unfold out (and due to it being good outdoors almost year-round right here, they get a number of use!). However as for conditioned indoor rooms, these six areas are it! We do have a laundry closet within the kitchen and a small hallway that joins a few of the rooms, however these don’t depend as precise rooms by any commonplace I’ve ever heard of.

Notice: a grand hallway with precise furnishings in it – like an entry lobby, can undoubtedly depend as a room (for instance, our final home’s lobby had an entry desk, a chandelier, and two of its personal closets inside that roughly 12′ x 12′ room – so the actual property itemizing for that home listed it as a room and included its measurements).

Talking of our final home, let’s examine the FOURTEEN rooms we had there:

1. The Kitchen
2. The Household Room
3. The Eating Room
4. The Workplace
5. The Downstairs Toilet
6. The Lobby
7. Our Bed room
8. Our Toilet / Stroll-In Closet
9. Our Daughter’s Room
10. Our Son’s Room
11. The Corridor Toilet
12. The Artwork / Homework Room
13. The Laundry Room
14. The Bonus Room

That’s a distinction of 8 rooms – not together with unconditioned areas – so there’s undoubtedly a noticeable distinction between the 2 homes. A humorous facet notice is that our Richmond home additionally had a GIANT walk-up attic (as massive as the whole first flooring of the home), a two-car storage, and a massive out of doors shed, that are 3 different areas that we don’t have in our present home.

These three spots may maintain a ton of stuff, so together with taking place by 8 rooms, we additionally downsized these additional storage areas! That’s truly one thing I’m actually proud that we may accomplish. We used to have SO MUCH CRAP within the attic and the storage felt like we continually wanted to scrub it out.

The Rooms We *Don’t* Lacking Having

First, a fast disclaimer: completely different folks clearly have completely different wants and desires from their properties. Individuals typically ask us about “our downsizing journey” (please say that with drama and emotion like each individual on Love Island says “our relationship journey”) and we’re pleased to speak about how issues have gone for us, however we’re the primary to confess that each human on earth could have completely different experiences, opinions, and outcomes.

The purpose of this listing is simply to share our thought course of, which could provide help to decide what your “should have” areas are when you’re home searching, renovating, or possibly simply rethinking the perform of a spare room in your home. And when you’re occupied with downsizing, this may offer you some hope that you simply’ll be superb with out a [insert room you’ve always had here].

Additionally, we’re not scripting this to recommend that you simply demolish a sure room or really feel unhealthy about having it. Plenty of these rooms are very important in sure properties and households and, even when not, there’s nothing incorrect with a room merely being “good to have” both. Heck, we lived in our too-big-for-us home for 7 years earlier than we made the transfer right here! So possibly your spare bed room is sweet for resale, that additional powder room was enjoyable to brighten, or that basement gymnasium is nice for storing fifty-two bins of vacation decorations. We undoubtedly crammed our attic TO THE GILLS. We’ve got been there and we get it.

Once we lastly obtained to the place the place we had been excited (after which extraordinarily relieved) to downsize, we additionally knew it could contain some sacrifices and compromises in comparison with our earlier dwelling. Truthfully what this listing confirmed us upon additional reflection is what number of of them haven’t felt like sacrifices in the long term! That actually was the shock from this hindsight evaluation.

Don’t Miss: A Lobby

Longtime followers is likely to be shocked by this as a result of we generally bemoaned the lack of a lobby in our first two properties. Each had been small brick ranches the place the entrance door opened proper into the lounge. So having a correct entryway in our final home had felt like we’d FINALLY MADE IT. We had been fancy folks with a lobby!

However wanting again on it, that room appears like wasted sq. footage as a result of we mainly by no means used the entrance door (we all the time got here by way of the storage) so the lobby was simply additional area to move by way of on our technique to different rooms. And despite the fact that we’re again to that door-swings-right-into-living-area situation right here, it actually hasn’t bothered us. It’s such as you all the time lengthy for one thing, lastly get it, and notice it’s superb however not a deal-breaker if it went away once more.

It undoubtedly took a while to determine a furnishings structure that works across the entrance door, however we’re actually pleased with the way it’s turned out. We even have some good useful storage for coats and backpacks proper whenever you stroll in, because of the adjoining laundry closet (the children had been in school after we took this photograph, however their backpacks cling on these decrease hooks on the laundry closet door).

Finally, whereas we nonetheless see the worth of a lobby in some properties – even only for the “fancy issue” of getting one for a pleasant dramatic first impression – we’ve realized that we’d personally prioritize a useful entryway with storage. For instance, if given the selection between a grand open lobby or a fundamental entrance door with room for a small mudroom closet or backpack dropzone behind a door, we’d select the latter. In our case, we selected an excellent hardworking laundry closet and a pleasant open feeling within the dwelling space as an alternative of boxing out a proper lobby.

Don’t Miss: A Laundry Room

Once more, this may come as a shock contemplating we labored very laborious to create a laundry room from scratch in our final home (we stole area from our unfinished attic). We even went all out with a marble backsplash and under-cabinet lighting to make it essentially the most tricked-out laundry area we’ve ever owned.

On reflection, it was undoubtedly extra laundry area than we would have liked. Going into it, we pictured LOVING the choice to throw haphazard piles of to-be-washed objects on the ground, shut the door, and let or not it’s our little soiled secret. Or possibly having fun with some peace-and-quiet whereas we folded or ironed garments in right here.

However none of that ever actually occurred. Garments by no means made a pit cease in right here, other than time spent within the precise washer or dryer (they had been in our hampers earlier than – and folded on the mattress in our room after). Perhaps if we had extra children, busier sports activities schedules, or larger wardrobes (you realize Sherry loves a minimal closet) we’d have discovered ourselves needing this spacious secluded laundry zone on the finish of an extended upstairs hallway. However for our household, having the laundry so out-of-sight truly ended up being a sticking level. We had been continually forgetting we had any laundry operating as a result of it was on the very finish of this lengthy hallway tucked behind a door (in each former homes it was loads nearer to extra bustling areas of our dwelling just like the kitchen and we hardly ever forgot laundry because of that proximity).

In some ways, our new laundry setup is good for our habits. It’s proper in the midst of the home in a closet inside our kitchen/downstairs dwelling space, which makes it extraordinarily handy to everybody’s bedrooms and it tremendously cuts down on forgotten hundreds. However it’s nonetheless roomy sufficient that now we have a counter for pre-treating stains, a basket for wrangling too-be-washed objects that is likely to be on deck for the subsequent load, and flooring area for standing with out being completely in the way in which.

And since it’s nonetheless behind closed doorways, it doesn’t must be saved pristine AND it cuts down on the laundry noise remarkably effectively. It’s humorous additionally to comprehend that in our first two homes, we solely ever had laundry closets or nooks with a stackable washer/dryer – and by no means actually had a giant devoted room with cabinetry and tile and all that jazz like we had in our final home. However as soon as once more, I believe it was a case of “eh, we had it and it was good, however we’re simply superb with out it.” Principally whenever you downsize you select your priorities and your home can’t have every thing as a result of then it could simply be enormous.

Don’t Miss: The Eating Room

This in all probability comes as no shock to most individuals, contemplating how a lot “formal” eating rooms have fallen out of favor with many households. We additionally spoke typically about how hardly ever we used this room. We often ate household dinners at our kitchen island, so this was largely only a dumping floor for packages and to-be-dealt-with bins that we often cleaned up if friends had been coming over.

Now we solely have one indoor eating spot: the desk in our kitchen (which may seat as many as 8 folks if we pull it out, which we’ve carried out fairly a number of instances). As a household, now we have realized that we MUCH choose consuming at a desk dealing with one another, so it is a massive enchancment from sitting on greater stools all staring out in a line at our previous kitchen island.

One apparent draw back to that is that it’s a far cry from a “formal” setup, so when you love internet hosting dinner events, this won’t suffice. We’ve by no means been massive formal entertainers (we like an off-the-cuff set-out-the-chips-and-salsa recreation night time or an order-pizza-or-BBQ-burgers banquet), so it wasn’t a priority to ditch our eating room. Lately if now we have folks over, we have a tendency to collect outdoors anyhow. We frequently eat out by the pool, the place now we have a pleasant massive desk with an umbrella that additionally seats 8.

Don’t Miss: The Bonus Room

Because the identify implies, this room was “additional” area in our final home that we created by ending the attic over our storage. After our kitchen, it was the most important room in the home and it acted as a film/TV room + playroom + crafting area. So it’s humorous to assume such a multifunctional room falls into the “don’t miss” class. However wait – there’s a clear purpose why we don’t miss it that we’ll get to in a second.

Changing this unfinished area on our second flooring into conditioned usable sq. footage was partly as a result of it simply made sense for the home (it already had HVAC arrange, so all it actually wanted was drywall to be a useful room – plus we nonetheless had a full unfinished walk-up attic on the third flooring for storage). And making this a bonus room appealed to us as a result of we thought a secondary dwelling area that was designed with the children in thoughts could be good. You realize, a enjoyable area to corral everybody’s children after we had folks over, a room that could possibly be messy upstairs however you simply ignore it downstairs, and a spot for cozy household film nights.

Funnily sufficient, the explanations we favored that bonus room are the exact same causes we love our household room on this smaller home! It’s an upstairs secondary dwelling area that’s designed with our youngsters in thoughts, to allow them to depart it messy, hang around with their pals whereas the adults hang around downstairs, and we are able to all pile in for a household film night time. Notice: we depend our small downstairs sitting space & kitchen as our major dwelling area as a result of all of us spend much more time in that consuming/cooking/hangout zone downstairs than we do up right here, but it surely’s fairly shut. Six rooms = you employ all of them, loads.

Format tip: in a small home, having two massive dwelling areas that aren’t proper subsequent to one another is de facto what makes this home really feel prefer it lives LARGE. We routinely have a ton of children up right here hanging out and the entire adults downstairs enjoyable within the kitchen/sitting space, and due to one being a complete flooring above the opposite, the children don’t hear each convo now we have downstairs, and we don’t hear no matter film they’re watching or recreation they’re enjoying. It’s nice.

Identical to our final home’s bonus room, our upstairs household room right here has a TV, an artwork desk, and open flooring area for video games & crafts. Issues have modified a bit now that our youngsters are older (we added that bonus room 6 years in the past), so we don’t expertise blocks and stuffed animals everywhere in the flooring like earlier than. However this room nonetheless sees its fair proportion of messes within the type of crafting explosions or board recreation marathons – all of which find yourself on the ground – which is another excuse we’re glad it’s upstairs and out of sight. Identical to our former bonus room!

So in the long run, the rationale we don’t miss the “bonus room” room is that we nonetheless kind of have it, simply by one other identify. And ours works even tougher right here as a result of it additionally has an workplace area tucked into it. Talking of which…

Missed It At First: The Workplace

As two individuals who do business from home, one concern when shopping for this home was not having a devoted room for a house workplace. In our final home we had transformed the formal front room into a big workspace for each of us, so we knew that downsizing to a room with out a devoted dwelling workplace was going to be a giant change.

The distinction felt particularly difficult proper after we moved, because of COVID throwing digital studying onto our plates. For a complete yr, all 4 of us ate nearly each meal at dwelling, labored & did faculty 5 days per week from this home, and so forth. I imply: nothing places a home to the check like that. And I’m pleased to report that we made it work, but it surely undoubtedly wasn’t the most efficient time of our lives (I’m certain numerous folks would say the identical factor). This was the setup proper after we moved. It was… not superb.

The humorous factor is that it wasn’t all that completely different from what we had occurring in our final home’s dwelling workplace (these two tiny chairs had been the children desk and the floating desk about 4 toes away was Sherry’s).

… however with children at dwelling all day lengthy making an attempt to do faculty whereas we tried to work. Yeah, you guys know what that’s like. Fortunately, that wasn’t the setup for lengthy – and lots of days truly regarded like me within the bed room on a piece name with the children upstairs doing faculty (or one/each of them in their very own rooms so they may focus slightly extra on one thing), and Sherry working down on the kitchen desk or locked in our bed room for a in a different way timed zoom assembly or convention name.

Issues obtained a lot better because the room advanced and the children went again to highschool, and the desk area we carved out is fingers down my favourite “dwelling workplace” I’ve ever labored from (I’m typing from right here proper now and I’ve the entire room to myself!). You simply can’t beat all that pure gentle and the view out of that massive window.

I’ve additionally switched again to a laptop computer so I can work outdoors on the upstairs deck (which I do typically) and even on the kitchen porch, such as you see beneath.

In the meantime, Sherry usually works downstairs on the kitchen desk and even outdoors by the pool together with her laptop computer, so in 2.5 years we undoubtedly have discovered what works for us and love having such a versatile setup. It’s often inconvenient not having a devoted, quiet area for work (like throughout the summer time when the children are dwelling), however we by no means had a door on our previous workplace, so we’re no strangers to being interrupted by children or guests. And identical to we did in our final home – if we want a totally quiet area we simply take the laptop computer into our bed room and shut the door. We actually have a desk in there by the hearth, so it’s not a nasty setup.

Do Not Miss: The Storage

Sherry and I debated the place to place the storage on this listing as a result of each now and again I consider a storage fondly, simply attributable to how handy it was, however I’ll clarify why we in the end each voted: don’t miss. Sherry has an precise hatred for our final storage and is so glad we don’t have one anymore simply attributable to how a lot time we spent cleansing it out and coping with it being filled with crap on a regular basis, so it wasn’t a shock that she voted that means. However my emotions had been a bit extra layered.

We’re usually very tidy, organized folks. However for some purpose, garages, sheds, attics, and so forth have all the time been our Kryptonite. Our Monica’s Closet, if you’ll. Each single time we spent days cleansing and organizing it and promised ourselves we wouldn’t let it get that unhealthy once more… it did. So the rationale we don’t miss a storage is simply that we’re extraordinarily grateful we’re now not in that tremendous irritating loop of not preserving our promise to ourselves and spending one more weekend cleansing the freaking storage.

Not having a storage or a garage-like area has truly compelled us into a lot better habits. We take care of bins and to-be-donated stuff straight away (out to the automotive it goes). We don’t accumulate secondhand furnishings with as a lot abandon (Sherry’s nonetheless a fan of the curbside discover, however provided that we instantly have a necessity/spot for it). And never having a storage has spared us from having to dedicate weekends to massive storage clean-outs and, extra importantly, the final disgrace we continually felt in regards to the state of our storage. It was an on a regular basis sticking level that we by no means solved. And now, we’ve solved it by not having one.

The easy purpose I very often look again on a storage fondly is that it’s good to have a lined enclosed area to retailer issues like bikes and our automotive. Right here I actually simply would love it for bike storage. Our automotive is out within the open and it’s utterly superb, however we use bikes right here rather more than we did in Virginia, and having a moist seat from them sitting out isn’t wonderful (weirdly, it’s how mainly everybody shops their bikes right here: all lined up outdoors). It could be easy sufficient to make a lined little alcove for our bikes someplace within the yard with a giant piece of tin on posts or one thing. Even simpler, I simply found these bike seat covers – and our seats aren’t moist anymore. So I believe Sherry is 100% proper. We can’t be trusted to not fill a storage with crap. We’ve got unlocked whole weekends spent on the seashore & our pool that in any other case would have been spent cleansing a storage if we had one. So I’m sure that in the long term it’s a win for us to not have one.

However lest you assume we’re totally cured… we DO have a small shed on the facet of our home that we use for instruments, yard tools, and different miscellaneous stuff. It’s in regards to the dimension of a port-o-potty, so we are able to’t actually stuff tons of issues inside… however I’m solely displaying you the skin of it as a result of – TRUE TO FORM! – it’s at present a multitude inside.

Generally Miss: Our Ensuite Toilet

This may occasionally come as a shock since we’ve put our plans so as to add a second rest room to this home on indefinite maintain (we simply don’t really feel squeezed for one in any respect but – and embarking on an costly reno when the present setup has labored superb for years now simply doesn’t really feel like the very best use of cash or time). So whereas we truly don’t miss having an ensuite rest room, we simply generally miss THIS particular rest room from our final home.

And I believe that’s largely as a result of we didn’t have a lot time to benefit from the completed product earlier than we moved. We gleefully completed the toilet and solely obtained to take pleasure in it for about 3 months earlier than we had a Florida zip code.

The timing definitely wasn’t good, but it surely was a small casualty for making the extra rewarding way of life change of downsizing to a hotter and extra walkable dwelling close to the seashore. Trying again at these photographs, I believe we simply want we had renovated the toilet MUCH SOONER (we lived on this home for 7 years, nearly all of which had been spent with the unrenovated rest room that you simply see in the earlier than photographs right here).

The Commerce-Offs Of Downsizing

Lacking that grand rest room of yore is a primary instance of reminding ourselves that we made intentional trade-offs by downsizing. Sure, we now not have a giant fancy marble rest room. As an alternative, now we have this stunning area to take an open-air bathe within the daylight (and an precise indoor bathe too). True story: all of us bathe outdoors round 90% of the yr – it’s our favourite spot with the solar streaming down and an entire lotta vegetation.

Really, a ton of downsizing is simply buying and selling one thing for one thing else. We reside a number of blocks from the seashore (we are able to stroll there in 3 minutes!) however all of us share a rest room. We don’t have a storage, however now we have a giant second-floor deck up within the bushes. Our kitchen is about 1/3 the scale of the one at our final home, however there’s a grocery retailer, eating places, and ice cream retailers inside strolling distance. Our web isn’t all the time dependable (severely it’s sloth-slow generally) however now we have a pool that we are able to swim in year-round and a firepit for s’mores. We’ve got loads much less sq. footage than we used to, but it surely’s simpler to scrub and extra reasonably priced to warmth & cool. You’ll be able to learn extra about the whole strategy of downsizing (it wasn’t all roses!) and that complete tradeoff idea right here on our about web page.

And when you’d prefer to learn different posts we’ve shared about downsizing over the past 2.5 years, these are full of data:

Additionally, you probably have any questions on wall colours or the place we obtained sure objects within the photographs inside this put up, this put up has all of the supply data for our present home, and this put up has all of the supply data about our final home.

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