We have had an "itch" over the last 2 years that we keep thinking about scratching. Every few weeks, one of us would crack an obscene joke about wanting to sell our house and move into a home that is easier to maintain. Then we would follow that up with sending each other homes in the area we would find on zillow.
Then about 3 weeks ago we had a serious conversation about the thing we keep talking about. "What would life look like if we sold our current home, moved into more of a neighborhood, and simplified our lives a bit. "
I'm writing about this to hopefully some day look back at this with confidence saying "we made the right choice"...
We love our current home. It is beautiful, unique, and tranquil. We are almost self-sustaining with a large garden, hens, and an orchard of fruit trees which we (mostly Ryan) built from nothing.There is a sparkling pool and several seating areas for entertaining and enjoying the mountain views.
Our lives are insanely busy in this season - and I don't see them getting any slower in the future as our children grow and start to do activities. We don't really find ourselves enjoying the amenities our home provides. Instead, they have become burdensome. Also, Ryan actually spent more time living in other places than in this home. (We went through a deployment and several long TDYs while living in this house.)
In the month of August I added up that Ryan and I spent 15 hours doing yard work, and our yard still looked like shit. :D If we lived in a neighborhood with a more manageable property - 15 hours of yard work would have created a pristine landscape!
So alas, we came to the conclusion we would put our home on the market. Which required some long days and late nights of getting the house ready to show.
We put it on the market last Friday and by Saturday afternoon it was under contract! We have until December 10 to find a new place to land.
Which at this point as I write this post - we are under contract on a home I feel is the perfect one. It's in a cul de sac neighbor with sidewalks, it's an updated modern home, but it lies on 1 acre so we can still have privacy and a garden! (I don't know if I can go back to buying vegetables at the grocery store!)
We both feel in our hearts we are making the right choice for our family. I'm so excited to have a little more simplicity in managing our household! We have no regrets on the place we called home for 5 years. It served a great purpose and it will make a new family very happy.
With all that being said - the next 40 days are going to be insane. But we will get through!!
Comments
I hope everything goes smoothly but I really think it will. Buying and selling is stressful, but having the offers accepted on both sides is huge! We were lucky to be able to buy before listing our house (which we had to do since inventory is so low in our neighborhood and it took almost 2 years to find a house!). So we didn't close on the sale of our house until almost a month after we had moved into this house. But we are in the minority as I know many people buy and sell on the same day!