Same neighborhood, same schools, different "crib". A much, much smaller crib.
We made the decision to take a year to "regroup" --- try to save some money and figure out our long term plans. As many of you know, Brian's job has kept us on our toes. For the last few years he's been working for a company based out of Denver, CO. and last Spring he began doing a lot of travel for them. It's a pretty regular travel schedule and for me it's extremely stressful. The news of our landlord raising our rent just made the picture clearer ---- it was time to get aggressive. So, we shrunk our lives down into a 3 bedroom apartment. That is NOT easy.
The house we were renting was a great size although the plan was completely not functional --- nothing worse than wasted space! Especially in SoCal, where every inch costs $$$.
But what we didn't utilize in functional day to day square footage ---- we sure made good use of in storage! OMG! I was shocked at how much stuff we'd accumulated in just two years ---- maybe I hadn't been aggressive enough in our move from Westchester to ES?
Who owns 20 lanyards!?! Old dog towels --- do I really need 5? Sheets that I should have tossed ages ago. Office supplies that were bought, stored, bought, stored somewhere else, more bought and then store somewhere else ----- were finally all gathered into one, collective heap. Brian loves to save boxes --- he believes in repacking things just the way he got them. Which seems like a crazy idea to me when the box is taking up lots of room.
We rented a storage unit, where many boxes got dropped off. I dread the day we have to tackle that job!
Anyway, we're now just about settled into our place. It's OK.
I can't get all crazy happy about it b/c it's not a cute house. But I can be very grateful that we have a nice, clean, space that provides our kids with their own rooms. I'm grateful that we're still in the ES city and our kids didn't have to changes school, and when we write our first check into the savings account, I'll be clinking glasses with Brian.
And as a side note ---- we were skeptical if we were going to be able to do this. For many reasons ranging from our egos to the simple logistics of space. But we took it as a sign when we were walking out of the apartment on our second viewing, and there waiting to see the place was a family with four boys. Meaning, here was a family that was going to squeeze FOUR KIDS into this place.
Oh, those little hints from the Universe! ;)
