What is It Like To Downsize?

Believe it or not, we have lived in our new house for over six months now. Half a year! So we thought this would be a good time to check in on some of the goals we had for moving and downsizing to see what has met and exceeded our expectations – along with detailing some of the biggest challenges we have encountered along the way.

This is going to be long & detailed, because it feels like there is a lot of ground to cover, and while this rundown will be fairly specific to our situation, I think it’ll still give you a good window into the realities of downsizing that you might also encounter if you were to go for it. And yes, it includes money details. And a chart. You know I enjoy charts.

To Recap, Why Did We Move?

we have a thorough explanation of our reasons for moving from Virginia to Florida in this post from February. But the gist, as we said back then, was that we hoped to “live with less and be outside more.”

For years we have been working towards paring down and owning less stuff (so many podcast eps about that!) and all of the apparent perks of downsizing truly appealed to us, like spending less money on things you do not need (and less money heating & cooling a space you do not use). Devoting less time to cleaning, organizing, & maintaining a house and those aforementioned surplus belongings is also something that truly sounded good to us (as people who have likely devoted 20 solid days of our lives to “cleaning up the garage” over the last 15 years).

Not only did we downsize from our 3,150 square foot home in Richmond, VA to this 1,400 square foot home in Florida, but we also sold our beach house and duplex rental properties in Cape Charles, VA – in short going from 4 larger homes (because the duplex was technically two adjoined homes) down to 1 much smaller home.

As a reminder, not only was our last house more than twice as big as our current home, it also had 14 rooms (our new home has 6), and around 10 closets (our new home has 2.5 thanks to one that has our HVAC system taking up nearly half of it). Not included in that 14-room total, our last home also had a full-sized walk-up attic (that is simply Sherry’s old “basket section” pictured below)…

… as well as a large shed and a spacious two-car garage that at one point were all full of items – many of which we rarely and sometimes never touched (except to at last donate them in the later stages of our downsizing journey).

Obviously, we could’ve downsized without relocating to a whole new state. But to achieve that “be outside more” part of our goal, we hoped our one smaller house to also be in a warmer location. Ideally, one that was close to a beach, and generally more walkable to shops/restaurants/parks, etc. That is why we landed on Florida (after many spring break trips there, as well as a trip to Costa Rica which led to our kids heavily campaigning to move there because they enjoy the beach & warm weather as much as we do). Again, there is more detail in this post about our big decision to move if you want it.

Spoiler alert: when it comes to our goal of “living with less and being outside more,” we have checked off both of those boxes, and we see daily reminders that this move was such a strong choice for our family. Which makes us extremely grateful. Nothing was straightforward about this big life change (paring down so much nearly feels like training for an Olympic event, it is extremely physical work but also a ton of mental work – and we did it in the middle of a global pandemic). But it is has been SO WORTH IT.

We are grateful to wake up here every day (all of us, including the kids are known to say “I still cannot believe we live here!”). And Burger might be the happiest dog in the world, due to an extreme enjoy of laying in the sun and attempting (but never even coming close to succeeding) to catch lizards. What is that they say? The thrill of the hunt?

So it is safe to say that we all truly enjoy the change and are so thankful that we went for it. But I cannot stress sufficient that there was nothing straightforward about making this big life change to get to this point (our current satisfaction meant SO MUCH WORK leading up to that), so we must have truly hoped this big change in order to do all of the things it entailed! Including fitting all of our worldly possessions into one 16′ pod that we sent down to our new house in Florida.

In other words, I do not think many people blink their eyes and find themselves majorly downsized and living with less – it felt like a truly large life pivot to us, that took a lot of intentional (and hard) work. So if you are there in that not-lively zone right now, I am here to tell you, when we came out on the other side, it felt remarkable and still does. The novelty has not worn off in half a year, and might not wear off ever. Worth all the effort and then some.

If you are reading this, and you are like “I need specific details about what you did to downsize so much” – we have a bunch of podcasts & posts full of specific information, like:

• this podcast about exactly how we approached paring down
• this post about what we kept & what we left behind
• this podcast about one major perk of having fewer things
• this post about our much smaller kitchen storage setup
• this post about how we maximized storage in our smaller home

We also have some podcast interviews from further back with others who downsized, which majorly inspired us as well, like this one featuring Dana Miller, entitled: In Pursuit of Buying Less & Doing More and this one featuring Shavonda Gardner, entitled What is It Truly Like To Downsize?

So that is the answer to the “how did you in fact downsize?” question – now let us dive into how living with less and being outside more over these last 6 months has in fact felt (and some specific, quantifiable benefits that downsizing quite clearly brought into our lives).

Having Less Space

Spending last summer in our 1,800 square foot beach house gave us plenty of confidence about living full-time in a smaller home. But I’d be lying if I said the news of the pandemic (which came about a month after we made the decision to move) did not shake our confidence a little. We hadn’t planned on working and schooling from this smaller home. We hadn’t envisioned cooking at home more than ever in the smallest kitchen we’d ever owned. And we had planned on adding a second bathroom to this home right away (but have since chose to put that on hold, because a lot of what we assumed would be pain points in this smaller house in fact were not!)

Along that theme of anticipating one thing, but in fact experiencing another thing entirely… despite the curveballs, we have not felt the strain of living in less square footage truly at all (apart from two challenges I will get into later in the post). What we have found is that as long as we have a room or a spot for a particular function, it has not been especially essential how large that room is.

For example, we may have a laundry closet instead of a laundry room now, but at the end of the day, we still have a place to do laundry. Same goes for spaces to sleep, cook, work, lounge, etc. All of our major functions are checked off here, so we do not feel majorly impacted by having less space.

We also do not feel nearly as “on top of one another” as we sometimes feared we might. I think a big part of this is thanks to the layout of our house, like having the family room on a separate level and having the kids’ bedrooms on the opposite end of the house from ours. We had looked at some larger houses around here that, in retrospect, would’ve been much more frustrating to live with because of their floor plan – especially with everyone in the family at home all day/every day both working and doing schooling.

For instance, a one-level house down the street from us had the bedrooms placed at each corner of a central, open living area. I think it would’ve offered little sound barrier or privacy between the TV/kitchen area and each bedroom – and if Sherry had a Zoom call for work & the kids had at-home learning going on at the same time, the sound likely would have carried from literally any space into any other.

In fact we have three pointers we’d offer for anyone thinking about floor planning for smaller space living. Obviously these are highly personal and it all depends on how your family will use a space, but we have found that these three things made all the difference for us:

Layout Pointer #1: It is strong if your two largest rooms can be designated for everyone to use and share as a family (our upstairs family room is the largest, followed by our downstairs kitchen/dining/sitting area). Had we made the upstairs room into our bedroom, we would’ve been claiming the largest room in the house as our own personal spot to sleep, which simply does not feel efficient at all in a smaller home (our bedrooms are the smallest three rooms in the house, with the exception of the bathroom, which works truly well for us).

Layout Pointer #2: It is also strong if those two large family spaces are not right next to each other. I know open-concept is all the rage, but we have found it invaluable that these two shared spaces are in distinct areas of the house because it helps us all to not feel on top of each other (and it keeps sound from carrying too much). The kids can watch TV upstairs in the family room while Sherry and I work on something downstairs, or one child can take an at-home-learning test at the kitchen table while the other works on a project upstairs at the homework/art desk (it is key that they cannot hear or see each other, which might not have been the case if our only two “shared” family spaces were essentially conjoined).

Layout Pointer #3: We have enjoyed having our bedroom on one side of the house while our kids bedrooms are on the other side. We are still all sleeping on the same floor of the house (something we all hoped), but we are not on top of each other. Although our last house was much larger, we were a lot closer to our kids bedrooms there (all of our bedroom doors led out to the same central hallway) so it is a pleasant change not to worry that we will wake up the kids while scream-laughing at some random TikTok video at 11pm. It is also truly pleasant that the kitchen/dining/sitting room is truly in the heart of the home (it is literally in the middle), which we like a lot. We all find ourselves drawn to that space throughout the day, so it is pleasant to have it centrally located.

The other thing that has helped this house feel more spacious for us is the generous amount of outdoor “rooms” that we have. Like our wide front porch and upstairs deck, which provide a ton of additional space to escape to. I frequently take my laptop out to the table on the upstairs deck to do some work or make some calls, and I have to tell you, I have never had a better office view. Speaking of the outdoors…

Spending More Time Outside

It’ll be hard to articulate what a positive change this has been to our daily lives, but I am so glad we made being outside one of our goals with this move. We knew we were choosing a location with a climate that would encourage us to spend more time outdoors (even in November we are getting mostly 70ºF days) but I do not think we expected that the landscape would also draw us outside as much as it does here.

Not only do we have the beach simply a few blocks away (it is a three-minute walk), we have also got plenty of wooded trails and paved pathways around us too – all of which give us access to parks, playgrounds, shops, restaurants, other neighborhoods, etc. So we have Plenty of good excuses to get some fresh air.

We have certainly incorporated so many more outdoor activities into our habits than when we lived in the suburbs of Richmond. Sherry has been able to establish a daily walking routine that includes various wooded trails and walking along the beach. I squeeze in a run, walk, or even an occasional paddleboard most early mornings. We have a weekend biking routine with the kids, and they spend simply about every break between school lessons out in the yard running around or hanging out together on the tree swing. And unless it is raining, most evenings we try to fit in some sort of family walk. And, of course, we have the beach simply a few blocks away.

One other perk to so much outdoor living has been getting to know our neighbors and making friends with people who live near us whenever we are out and about. Family walks have led to us meeting other families with kids the same age as our own who will all attend school together once they go back in person. We are so grateful that even during a pandemic, thanks to having this outdoor lifestyle, we have been able to meet so many new people (who we cannot wait to have over for dinner when things are safer). In a year where fresh air has become even more essential to our collective health and sanity, it has been so helpful.

Owning Less Stuff

We had already been enjoying the benefits (I nearly said “thrill” there, ha!) of paring down and decluttering for a few years now, so we did not truly expect any surprises, but one thing we have both noticed is that we do not truly lose stuff here. Like if we are looking for a certain piece of clothing or tool or toy, we know exactly where to find it.

There are likely two reasons for this, and one is simply a function of moving. Since we have packed, unpacked, and organized every single thing we own, our memory of where things are is fairly fresh.

The second thing is that having less space means fewer spots that things could be and less junk to sift through when you are hunting for something. In our last house, we had cleaning stuff upstairs in the bathrooms, but also downstairs under the kitchen sink. Here is it is all under the kitchen sink. In our last house, games were spread out between our bonus room, our living room, and even the kids’ rooms. Now they are all in our family room.

There was a reason for having things spread out in that house (sometimes you do not want to go down to the kitchen to get the cleaning spray you need for the upstairs bathroom) but I think part of it was simply a general tendency to fill the space you have. Empty bathroom cabinet? Let us put an extra bottle of cleaner in there! That house had so many cabinets and closets (our kitchen alone had 51 cabinets, versus the 12 that we have here). So when we had those storage spaces in all corners of our house, we filled them with things. And over time it became harder to remember what was where.

Perhaps we will be singing a distinct tune in a few months as time has fogged our memory of unpacking & organizing within an inch of our lives (that is truly a large part of downsizing: finding a smart spot for everything). But for now, it certainly feels like having less space to spread things out & stash extra stuff is keeping us a lot more organized. Plus, without plenty of spare space to store things, it forces us to be truly thoughtful about what we are buying and adding to our belongings.

Spending Less Money

Let us talk money! Plenty of people downsize for financial reasons, and they were certainly a factor for us too. We have consistently considered ourselves to be fairly frugal, but there were moments over the last couple of years where we did not feel that way. Particularly when we were in the midst of renovating the duplex, furnishing the beach house, and paying for insurance, utilities, and taxes for four distinct homes (remember, the duplex = two attached houses). Life suddenly felt quite full of bills!

So a big part of what helped sell us both on the idea of downsizing was that we could cut down on our bills and put a stop to paying for all of this space that was not being used all the time. We talked all about the big money question everyone was asking us back in May on the podcast (the money side of selling three houses and downsizing to one smaller home), but simply last week I crunched some other numbers for the first time and it was kind of mind-blowing. So I hoped to talk about three other areas that we are seeing a big difference: utilities, landscaping, and gas (like for our car).

Utilities

Let us start with some utility bill costs because they are some of the most obvious savings that people seek when they downsize. Keep in mind, these numbers represent going from paying to heat/cool/have lights on/have water/have internet for 7,000 square feet (across 4 houses) to all of those things in simply 1,400 square feet (our current house), so they are extra dramatic, and likely a lot more than you might see going from one house to one smaller house. This downsizing thing truly made a large quantifiable difference for us:

Simply put, you can see that going from 7,000 to 1,400 square feet will likely save us about $7,750 a year on simply these three utility bills alone.

Landscaping

In addition to reducing our interior space, we also cut down big time on the exterior spaces that we have to maintain. Our lot in Richmond was a little under an acre of land, and we spent a whole bunch of time & money mowing, seeding, fertilizing, irrigating, mulching, & leaf-blowing it each year. We did in short all of it ourselves for many years, but over the last couple of years began hiring out certain tasks (like having someone mow it while we spent the summer in Cape Charles so it did not turn into a jungle).

In turn, we also had to pay someone to mow the yards at our beach house and duplex whenever we were not there to take care of that ourselves. Much like bills, it felt like the mowing never stopped. And the mulching, the seeding, and the leaf blowing. In fact, last year we spent about $3,750 on lawn care alone across all four houses (that also includes a few big leaf pickups along with all that mowing, and a large delivery of mulch that we’d get annually for our various garden beds along with grass seed to reseed things ourselves in the fall, etc).

Here in Florida, we have spent $0 on lawn services because, well, WE HAVE NO LAWN. It is a much smaller lot – about 10% of the size of our Richmond house – and it is primarily simply a layer of pine needles, which is common in our neighborhood, along with a lot of native plants (more on that here). So while we have spent some money on new plantings, tree trimming, and fresh pine needles, it is nowhere close to the ongoing money we had been shelling out to maintain three yards back in Virginia.

Simply to get a rough idea, when you add that $3,750 yard care savings to our utility savings of $7,750, we are already up to $11,500 in annual savings! So even if you take $1,500 out of that for various start-up yard stuff here (the tree trimming we have had done, some plants we brought in, and some pine straw we thickened in some areas), that is still a giant difference in money going out the door ($10,000 dollars! every year!!). Plus many of those things will not be annual expenses (like our initial landscaping and tree-maintenance).

Gas

This one is less about having downsized and more about where we downsized to. As I mentioned above, we sought out a place that was extremely walkable so that we could reach shops, restaurants, parks, and the beach without getting in our car. We lucked out in finding a spot that met that criteria and, apart from big trips to the grocery store (for more bags than we could carry home), or longer trips to a big box store (like Target), we have tons of stuff we can get to on foot or by bike.

Moving also eliminated the need to drive back-and-forth between our house in Richmond and our beach houses in Cape Charles. Round trip that was about 300 miles, which brought in up to about 5 hours total – and $30 in tolls each time! During the heaviest parts of our renovations were doing that trip 2 to 4 times per month. So between that and our regular driving around town, we spent over $3,250 in gas & tolls in 2019.

For comparison, in the last six months we have only spent $310 on gas. In half a year! That calculates out to around $620 for the year, which leads to an approximate savings of around $2,600 annually. We realize some of this reduced driving is also attributable to the coronavirus, so it is not a ideal comparison to 2019. I know plenty of us have cut back on our normal driving habits because of things like remote working, fewer in-person errands, canceling travel, etc – but whatever the cause, it feels good to go for days without getting into our car. Plus it brings our approximate annual savings to $12,600 across those three categories! That is $126,000 every ten years!

A Swift Money Disclaimer

I will wrap up this money section with a swift disclaimer that this move is not saving us money in every aspect of life, since there can be some hidden costs that may in fact go up when you move. One thing that has ended up being more pricey here is food (oh how we miss Aldi!) and also our property tax rate. Now, we are still saving money in overall property tax payments because we made such a dramatic reduction in property, but the savings are not as much as if we’d stayed in Virginia. So do not consistently assume that simply because you are downsizing that all of your costs – like food, property taxes, HOA fees, transportation costs, etc – will go down, especially if you are moving to a fully new area.

So, What Are The Challenges Of Downsizing?

Earlier I said there have been two things about downsizing that I’d characterize as challenges, not because they are insurmountable (they are not) but simply because they require some active work and attention on an ongoing basis. But like… so do plenty of other worthwhile things (kids, relationships, plants, perhaps crystals? Do not you have to talk nicely to those?). So neither of these things are deal-breakers in the least – and they are both things that you fully adjust to over time, but I am consistently a fan of being thorough (hence how long this post has become). So here we go:

#1. Bulk Storage Space Is Nonexistent

When you have simply the space that you use and need – it is strong! You do not spend time heating and cooling a room you do not use, or money filling it with furniture that you never sit on (like our rarely used dining room in our last house that mostly simply became a holding area for stuff we had to bring to the duplex or beach house – or things that we hoped to donate). That being said, in our much smaller home without extra rooms… there is zero space to dump things that you want to deal with later.

I am not gonna lie. Sometimes you simply want a guest room or a garage to put stuff that you want to fix up or donate or sort later, and that is not possible here. In our last house I also mentioned that we had a large two-car garage, a large walk-up attic (seen below – it was GIANT!), as well as a large, detached shed. All of which were full of things at one point. FULL OF THEM.

By comparison, our current house has no garage (we got used to not having one at the beach house, which gave us the confidence to forgo one here), no real usable attic space (we have an access door in the ceiling of our laundry closet, but it is mostly simply insulation and some plumbing & heating systems up there), and one small attached shed (seen below).

Are we making it work? Emphatic and resolute yes. Was it something to get used to after having all of those aforementioned drop zones for many years? Yup. For sure.

Our downsized number of tools are stored out in the shed for example – no problem! But I do not think either of us realized how much we used those bulk storage spaces for things like “extra furniture we want to redo” or “leftover project supplies.” Or you know, simply space where something could be shoved out of sight when guests were coming over (our garage was frequently a large holding area for stuff like that).

Along with using that small shed that you see above for tools, we can also store some leftover project materials in the shed, but we are forced to quite swiftly donate or use or return whatever does not fit – which, again, is in fact a good thing, but it is not consistently the straightforward/lazy thing. And sometimes after a long sweaty project, it is pleasant to get to toss things into the corner of the garage and relax on the couch… which simply cannot happen here.

The bright side of this situation is that it has kept us truly “honest” about what we buy or bring into the house because it, well, literally has to be brought into the house. In the past, we might’ve scooped up some extraneous furniture or a random decor item that we want to “save” at a yard sale or from a sale rack with a plan to “fix it up eventually” or “find a place for it somewhere.” And that is how our garage and our attic became a Monica’s Closet of sorts that we were frequently too embarrassed to show anyone. This picture is tame BTW, because we never had the urge to snap any photos when it was insanely far gone (I wonder why?).

In many ways, we are truly appreciating the required thoughtfulness that this limitation has imposed on us. We are glad that we do not have to dedicate weekends to periodic “garage cleanouts” or worry about finding time to organize that yard sale we desperately need to host (sometimes that dragged on for years and we eventually donated everything anyway).

It does mean we are going to have to be creative when it comes time to, say, take on a big renovation like our kitchen (where are all of the new cabinets or appliances gonna go when they are delivered?). But we figure that people renovate in all sorts of places, including small city apartments, so we will be able to figure something out when the time comes. We already painted our kitchen cabinets, which offset all of those cooking items into other spaces (mainly our bedroom) and it truly was not that bad. I like to think that we have way less in this house, so offsetting any of it will not be as bad, because we have pared back so much already.

#2 – It is Constant Upkeep

This is extremely related to the last challenge we listed, but it bears mentioning that you do not simply downsize once and you are done. It is a constant thing that you maintain, frequently with simply a few minutes a day, but it is something to be aware of. It is a choice you make, and then continue to keep making because you do not want your house to become overrun with things that get in the way of living life.

It is a phenomenon that we lovingly call “immediate processing” – something comes into the house, and it needs a place to go. Immediately. Because as we previously mentioned, there is no “put all the random things to be dealt with later here” zone. The good news is that it does not take tons of time every once in a while (like the old garage clean-up issue) because things never get that bad, but there is truly a necessary upkeep every day to stay on top of clutter and extra stuff. Even a pile of mail that comes in – you are like… let us deal with this right now!

It is in fact a truly good money-saving solution – because it heads off those “do not-truly-need-it” purchases, but even on a much smaller scale, it has changed the way we think and do things. We shop for home items (both as big as a piece of furniture or as small as a vase) much less – fairly much unless we have a need for something, we do not simply grab anything because it is cute – even if it is simply a little vase or a decorative box. Sherry used to slide through the checkout line at Target with things like that all the time in the days of having ten million built-ins.

Even the act of filling this half of our storage cabinet with various unused home accents like vases and bowls and candles prompted Sherry to say “do not need any more of these like ever.”

So simply seeing your limitations and knowing the amount of space you have for something can be beautifully freeing (and can save you money!) as long as you embrace it instead of trying to keep amassing things and shoving more things into a finite space (which is honestly what got us into the whole we-need-to-downsize mess in the first place).

Another example is that we have in fact changed our methods for certain things. Whereas our last house’s dining room or garage would fill up with donations over time and then we’d at last get them done once the room was packed to the brim, now we put donations in the back of our car in a bag, and anytime we are out running errands we drop them off instead of ever having them build-up at home. This is not truly a bad thing at all – in many cases it feels better, but it does involve sort of an “active role” in staying on top of things, versus putting things off for some future date when you in fact feel like dealing with them. So it is simply something to be aware of I think.

Ultimately, those two challenges are simply a part of adjusting to a fully new way of thinking & living – and in many ways they are good things – they simply take a certain amount of practice, discipline, and upkeep, so I hoped to make sure I mentioned them.

We are also still planning to add a small detached guest studio in our backyard that can double as a workspace if we ever need a quieter spot than the rest of the house can offer us – plus we are hoping to add a pleasant big closet in there for more storage (Sherry has been talking about hanging big white skeletons from our second-floor deck, and that closet might make all of her Halloween-decorating dreams come true).

In summary, downsizing has been an overwhelmingly positive change for our family. We know it is not for everyone, but it feels truly good to use and appreciate the space that we have. In our last house we’d go days without entering our dining room, bonus room, guest bedroom, or back porch (except perhaps to clean them, ha!). But here there is literally no space that goes to waste.

A year ago I would’ve told you that 1,400 square feet (and one bathroom) was simply too small for us (we were targeting more like 1,800 or 1,900 and only entertained this house because the layout felt so spacious) but now we feel like it is simply about ideal. Even in one of the weirdest years any of us have ever experienced (2020).