<p>We have a smaller house, and a newer house w/o mortgage, so I don’t quite relate to the burden aspect (we are able to hire someone to garden, clean once a week and occasionally hubby fixes something though).</p>
<p>I dream of downsizing but to cash out of the housing bubble we live in (our house has gone up more than 200%). I think about this A LOT. Condos just have not gone up like houses around here, and even adding a 20 min commute to work drop our house price dramatically. </p>
<p>We aren’t planning to give up our jobs for another 20 years or so, so a different general location isn’t possible. But if we were more foot-loose and fancy free, it would surely be to live around the world very differently with real adventure, not just another place in North America. </p>
<p>But having said that I DO think hubby and I need to find ways to add quality to our life. Its a good life, we love spending time together, but neither of us feels we take advantage of the location in we live in nor have as much fun as we really could have. No doubt in my mind we could have a much higher quality life without spending more. It would involve making more conscious decisions, not falling prey to our routine, and pursuing new goals outside of work.</p>
<p>I am the opposite. I enjoy my house and could never imagine living in a condo or an apartment. I don’t think I would enjoy having other people so close to me. My house is very open and I have lots of windows that look out over a valley and with some ocean sightings from some of my windows. Lots of birds. The rooms I would want to de-clutter are my kids. My youngest is a packrat and she has proceeded to take over an entire wing of our house. She has slowly taken over the rooms of her sister and brother. One room for sleeping, another room for studying and her own room for dressing and storing her clothes. I just have to close the doors or not go to that end of the house.
I have a huge yard but most of it is wild. I live in a mild climate but not much grows due to the summer fog so yard maintenance is not an issue. It doesn’t look great but it doesn’t look terrible. Between the dogs and gophers and lack of hot summer days I have given up growing anything pretty.
Though some summers by mid July I am ready to move a few miles inland where I see the sun before 4 pm and where I could grow some flowers with color in my yard.</p>
<p>As part of their divorce agreement, my parents sold my childhood home as soon as both us kids were legal adults. Then they burned rubber as they headed toward their new lives in Florida or roaming in an RV. Now they lament about how they never see their children or grandchildren, guilt us into spending our hard-earned vacation days on their sleep sofas, and complain that our hall bath isn’t big enough for them when they visit. As a result, my lame brain has concluded that all of our malcontent could have been avoided if somebody had just held on to the old house. So, as a grown-up now, that’s what I plan to do.</p>
<p>I love our house and have no plans to move out. We will live at this address until we’re no longer able go up the stairs. It will be paid for in 15 years, maybe sooner if we can expedite payments when college is behind us. That’s about the same time we’ll be ready to retire. So, if all goes according to plan, we’ll be mortgage-free in retirement, can afford to travel as much as we want, and can rent the space above the garage to cover maintenance costs. </p>
<p>Ironically, we’re also holding on to this house because it’s large enough to shelter those “lets head to Florida as fast as we can” parents when they lose their independence. Maybe I’ll give them a sleep sofa instead of a real bed. ;)</p>
<p>Got 1 in college, and a rising senior. Hubby and I are planning to sell the old homestead as soon as first child is out of college and living independently. We also want to rent - don’t want to be tied down to 1 city. Want the flexibility to move where our kids are if they need us for a time. Can’t wait! So tired of all the maintenance!!</p>
<p>We just renovated our house with plans to stay here as long as possible. Though it’s 3,800 sq feet, the house is configured in such a way that we can (and do) live on the first floor. Son’s room, guest room and home gym are on the 2nd floor, so some days I never even walk up the stairs. I will admit to the fantasizing about downsizing to a condo within walking distance of good shops, restaurants, etc. If something happened to my husband, that is probably what I would do. He’s a yard person and hates condo living.</p>
<p>I’ve been in the process of de-cluttering for the last few months. I still have a long ways to go. I do find that the less stuff you have the easier it is to keep up with the house. And quite frankly, I’ve relaxed my standards quite a bit. As long as the house isn’t filthy, I’m fine.</p>
<p>OP… I feel your pain. A decade ago enjoying very lucrative careers we bought my parents a home and a vacation home. We have been hit unusually hard by the economic downturn and now are saddled with 3 mortgages and are underwater on one. Thankfully we also have substantial savings so we aren’t going to lose the farm…yet. Somedays I would like a plain room in a convent in Rome!</p>
<p>Yes,yes,yes…We are taking the plunge, well sort of…This week we’ve have guys at the house giving us estimates on renovations that must be done in order to sell the house. We hope to put it on the market next spring. When the house sells (knock on wood), we’ll move to an apt. until DH can find work in the area we will be moving to. Last year we gathered all our nerve and built our dream retirement home (on the opposite side of the state). For now,we try to get down there every other weekend with longer stays in the summer months. We dream about running away to the new house all the time. We can’t wait to live there permanently.</p>
<p>I thought things were going OK, but I might be getting close to a crisis… I’m pretty happy and settled in my current career, but today I got a proposal about (sort of) leading a program at a startup, which would mean ditchig everything I worked hard for and going back to my old roots. Yikes. H thinks it is a golden opportunity that I should not pass up. I’m not so sure.</p>
<p>Real estate… It is an easy question. Love my house and my yard, but hate clutter. When I was in college, my biologist roomie came up with a very biology-appropriate term for clutter - “benthos”. Naturally, I called clutter “rising enthropy”. H is out of town, so I am on a mission to lower the enthropy of our benthic deposits, so to speak: I mercilessly toss every bit of junk I come upon. :)</p>
<p>As far as dreams of simple life go, my dream is to live in a tiny house on a mountainside on the Big Island, so I could see the ocean in the distance as I surf the Net while drinking my morning coffee. I would grow tropical fruit, have no winter clothes (only flip flops and summer dresses!), and the kids would always visit us instead of the in-laws for Christmas. :)</p>
<p>Wow! And I thought I was the only one who was feeling like home ownership is a chore. Our house is not large by CC standards (1900 sq.ft.), but it feels like way more house than DH and I need. It’s in a nice location - one can walk out the back yard and all the way down to the river through dedicated greenbelt land- and the neighborhood is great. BUT, you can’t walk to anything retail, and a car is needed to get anywhere.
There are 2bedroom-2bath older condos in the neighborhood that I sometimes fantasize about living in. No yard to take care of, right on the edge of a park, and cheap enough that we could sell current house and buy one and have NO mortgage, which would give me flexibility in jobs, and I could choose something less stressful. I know that if I was by myself I would do that, because I would not be able to handle all the yardwork and maintenance without my DH.
But the issue of grown children coming home to visit, and possibility of grandkids coming to visit makes me question whether it would be a good idea. (Plus my Father-in-law designed the house, and we have a lot of sweat and labor tied up in it.) My kids consider this home, and I still remember how I felt when my parents sold the family homestead and I realized that I could never go back… So for now, we are going to stay here and I am going to DE-JUNKIFY the house this summer, if I don’t get too lazy…
but I do wish I could make it all disappear and just take my musical instruments, photo albums, laptop and DH and move into a 900 sq.ft condo!</p>
<p>I’m with all of you – I make these spreadsheets to see how cheaply I could live and fantasize about selling the house, dumping the contents, and moving to France. Or Boston. Or Vermont.</p>
<p>But right now, I have to keep working to pay for everyone, which won’t change for the next 7 years (when S’11 is done with college). So maybe I should have a 7 year plan.</p>
<p>We are going from one house to another (but a good bit smaller). We decided long ago that we didn’t want to spend our life being a slave to the yard as we aged. So we decided to go all natural. There’s not one blade of grass in the yard at our future retirement home. It’s a work in progress but the front yard will eventually be evergreens that need no pruning,compact ground cover that spreads wherever it pleases and low growing shrubs. In the back, there are trees and pine needles leading down to a pier. The river is about a hundred feet from our deck.</p>
<p>I’ve worried about the kids not being able to “come home” but decided it’s not worth DH and I staying in a place we’d rather not live, being a slave to yard work and those stairs that kill my knees(all our bedrooms are upstairs here) all so our two S’s could come sleep in their old bedrooms a couple of times a year. When they come to visit now, they spend very little time at home, mostly out with friends. I don’t think either of them will be super nostalgic about this house. Our new house has three bedrooms so there is room for short-term guests.</p>
<p>S1(24) is in the military so will be all over the place for years. He has a gf but has told me not to expect marriage or grandchildren any time soon. S2, a rising senior, attends college just 30 miles from our newly built house and says he would like to stay in that region of the state if he can find a job in the area after grad. We’ll see. </p>
<p>I hate clutter. I’m already taking an inventory of “stuff that must go” before we move to smaller house. I’m determined not to haul junk to another house to store.</p>
<p>Thought I was one of the few who wanted to sell the house and spend some time traveling anywhere. I detest clutter and hate that my basement and attic is loaded with stuff that I neither want or need. A minimalist at heart, I would rid our home of every piece of extra whatever, and be very happy living a sparse life. Unfortunately the clutter belongs mostly to my kids who can’t fit the stuff into their own places. I feel like a storage warehouse.</p>
<p>I’m loving this thread because it’s great food for thought…move, downsize, sell it all, rent, etc. We’ve been trying to come up with THE post college tuition/retirement plan and still cannot pin one down. We own and rent out a smaller home in the mountains, but H would never consider retiring there…wants to stay in our area near the shore so he can use his boat and fish himself to death. ;)</p>
<p>Our house isn’t that large at all, but the yard is, and that is what I could so live without. Would love to do the condo thing but we also love having our kids around, and the family is growing not shrinking. (Not that I feel compelled to always provide a comfy 2nd home for all of them!) Plus I wonder how thin those condo walls would be…</p>
<p>PackMom, you have me thinking about doing the low/no maintenance landscaping thing, planting just some ground covers and no-care shrubs. Backyard is pretty and park-like and offers us a nice buffer between neighbors…now envisioning a lush forest back there with no lawn to mow…hmmmmm</p>
<p>Our home has always been nice & small (about 1200 square feet or so). We lived in an apartment when we were married until the S was 4 & starting to fight with D who kept destroying his lovely projects, so he needed his own space & bedroom. We enjoy our house & I really have to declutter it (it is MY junk inside, H’s outside). S helped us a lot when he was here, but I have to start tossing stuff as well.</p>
<p>While the idea of renting has its allure, we like having roots & H seems to enjoy puttering & repairing our home & yard. We like our neighbors & love living near family & friends. </p>
<p>We an all declutter whatever spaces we have control over and I WILL start–soon. :)</p>
<p>My parents and my in-laws did this. All of them wish they’d done it sooner. They’ve been an inspiration to us. </p>
<p>My parents, who are just coming off of two decades of apartment/big city living, have retired to the mountains and are building a small house on a large amount of land. They decided they wanted the privacy/beauty but not a lawn! I don’t think my in-laws will ever move from their townhouse, they just love it. The association keeps up the front yard, they have a small backyard for puttering in and I’ve never heard a noise from either neighbor. </p>
<p>We are living in our biggest house ever and it’s approx 1600 sq ft. In a few years we’re going to downsize back to 900-1000sq ft which is just about the perfect size for us. I grew up in a big house but never aspired for one of my own. Interestingly, my sister prefers smaller houses as well. </p>
<p>We’ve saved some of the money we could have spent on bigger houses and expenses but most of that money we budgeted for travel. We want to travel even more, entertain even more and just generally enjoy living below our means real estate wise. I really cannot wait to downsize again.</p>
<p>My parents sold my childhood home the year after I left for college and I survived just fine. My in-laws sold their large home when their kids were in their late 20s and that went well too. Sure, there were some sad feelings but they really are just sticks and bricks. Wherever we are all together is home. </p>
<p>There is no appeal for me in holding onto a house for occasional visits and/or my kid’s feelings about it. He gets to have his own home now, make his own memories. We have a three bedroom now and will go down to a two bedroom next. </p>
<p>We’ve recently started renting more centrally located homes for family vacations. It’s just fun to meet somewhere and no one family has the pressure to “host” everyone else. And there’s no hurt feelings because people are not returning to the homestead for this holiday or that one.</p>
So, as a grown-up now, that’s what I plan to do.</p>
So for now, we are going to stay here and I am going to DE-JUNKIFY the house this summer, if I don’t get too lazy…