My wife and I have been through quite range of houses in our 12-year relationship. (FYI, I’m 66, she’s 61. We married in 2011.) I moved out of my 1,500-square-foot (460-square-meter) three-bedroom condo to live in her three-story, four-bedroom, 2,900-square-foot (885-square-meter) house in Baltimore.
After a few years there, we moved to Las Vegas, where my wife worked for a billionaire and had a salary that was much higher than anything she has earned before or since. We were able to buy an extremely modest (for the circles she moved in) 4,640-square-foot (430-square-meter) house with four bedrooms, three full baths, a large double-height formal living room with gas fireplace, a dining room, a sunken family room with gas fireplace, a large loft area with built-in bookshelves, a bonus room that became the TV room, a three-car garage, and unusually for Vegas, a finished basement with a storage room and a large room set up as a workshop. The small back yard had productive fruit trees (kumquat, nectarine, and apricot) and a hot tub.
The master bath had a shower and a large jacuzzi tub and was larger than the largest bedroom in the first apartment I had as an adult. The master bedroom had a see-through gas fireplace that partially separated the sleeping area from a large sitting area with French doors that opened out over the back yard. It had a huge walk-in closet. (All of the closets in the house were walk-in.)
The largest of the other bedrooms was 15x19 feet (4.6x5.8 meters) and was adjacent and open to the upstairs loft area. It became my home office, although I only actually used a fraction of that space. (But it made for a good tax deduction.) The two guest bedrooms were on their own hall nearby.
We used most of the space in the house, although my dreams of setting up a nice wood shop in the basement never came to pass. So that and the formal living room were the least used spaces. Most of the time that we weren’t sleeping, eating, or watching TV was spent in the family room, where we kept the grand piano.
We had cleaners in every two or three weeks.
Having moved to Las Vegas from the East Coast, we had a pretty much constant stream of visitors who put the guest rooms to good use. So much so that I created a spreadsheet to track which visitors we had taken to which of the dozens of local attractions.
Leaving Las Vegas, we moved to a house in the Atlanta area that had about 2,600 square feet (800 square meters) before we finished the basement, which added about 1,000 square feet (300 square meters). That space became the TV room, library, and open play space for grandkids.
To fit into this smaller space, we sold the piano, a sofa and coffee table set that had been in the loft, and a few other pieces of furniture. But there was plenty of storage space in the basement in Atlanta, so we didn’t have to get rid of much. We hired housecleaners in Atlanta, too, although not as often.
Earlier this year, we moved in with my mother-in-law in her seaside cottage on the North Shore of Boston that has been in my wife’s family since 1960. It has about 1,500 square feet (460 square meters) and when we arrived was already full of MIL’s furniture, books, etc. So before leaving Atlanta, we sold, donated, or threw out almost all of our furniture, and lots of dishes, clothes, and other assorted stuff, including about half of our 2,200-book library. The only furniture we brought was our bed, chest of drawers, and bedside tables, and a few chairs.
The first thing we did here was to empty out all the junk (and it was all junk) in the one-car garage, so we could move some of our junk into it. We also rented a storage space to keep the books, papers, artwork, clothes, heirloom dishes, etc., that don’t yet fit in this tiny house.
I’ve just closed down my business and retired, so my major projects now are organizing our stuff in the garage, and clearing out the accumulated junk of 70+ years in the small unfinished cellar. I hope we’ll be able to eliminate, or at least cut back on, the rented storage space. But that may not happen before we clear out the attic: a task for next year.
Although we are earning less now (I’ll start on Social Security next month), my wife is much happier in her work situation than she was in the last two places. We liked the big houses, but they didn’t make up for the terrible stress she was under. And without a mortgage, our standard of living has not significantly changed. The TV room here is smaller, so we had to downsize the TV from 65 inches to 50 inches.
A big bonus: we’re an hour away from the oldest two grandchildren, and much closer to the family and friends we left in the Baltimore area.
Now, in this much smaller space, and with slightly less disposable income, I’m doing the housecleaning.
Like many Dopers, I was a book lover for most of my life, but having lived in six homes in 12 years and moved 50+ boxes of books several times (always with professional movers doing the heavy lifting, but packing and unpacking them myself) I no longer feel the need to be surrounded by “real” books. If you know you’re going to stay in your house indefinitely, and you have the space, having lots of books is nice. But having given away about a quarter of my collection when I first got married, and half of our joint library in the past six months, I no longer have the strong attachment to them I once had. I’m just fine with reading books on my tablet. I haven’t read a paper book in years, and don’t expect to buy one for the rest of my life. And I hope no one gives me one. I just don’t need any more stuff. Of any kind.
But I’m getting off on a tangent.