My family is embarking on a new journey. We are doing a MAJOR life shift and moving our family into a temporary housing situation so that we can plan and build our dream house and live debt free while we do it.
We have 4 kids: 3 daughters ages 10, 7, 4 and one son age 2. We had a friend about a year ago whose house burned down. It was awful. A year later they had rebuilt their home and were forced to have a do-over. They rebuilt their house with changes to make the house better, and only brought in things they needed. There was no clutter left to bring back in with them. Doesn't that sound amazing? Not the burned down house part, but the rebuild your house of your 40 year old dreams, not your 25 year old dreams, and only have in the house the things you really need? It sounds good to me!
So for a year or so now we've been talking about giving ourselves an intentional do-over. We are 42 and we want our children to grow up in the house of our dreams and to be able to enjoy all of it. We also don't want to find ourselves in 20 years saying that we wish we would have built a different house or didn't use credit cards, or cleared out all that stuff in the basement before we got too old to do it on our own. More importantly, we were being ran over by our stuff. None of our things had homes, the children's toys had taken over, mail had piled up. It was all just too much!
We bit the bullet! We made the decision we were going to move. Now we just needed to figure out where. We found a great townhouse that wasn't too far from where we were living, but it was in the wrong school district and we decided that lying to keep our kids in the district was not an option. We are okay with changing schools when we find our permanent place, but in the interim, we wanted to stay in the district. It's now been 3 weeks since the decision has been made and we have moved into an apartment in my in-laws basement. It's huge, in our school district, and we have a live in support network! My mother in law loves to do laundry and bathe my littles, so I might get a little spoiled. Can't get much better than that!!
In this move, we have decided that we will only take what we need and very little else. We brought our mattresses, our clothes, and basic kitchen utensils and necessities. They already had couches, so we are selling ours. Most of our large items in our house are going to family members or friends who need or are interested in having them. This way we can buy only what is necessary to go into the new house and be intentional about the size of what goes into the new house. On top of all these things, when we sell our house we plan to pay off our cars and any other debt we have acquired in our 8 year marriage. This will allow us to save enough money for the house and set ourselves up for success moving forward.
We have involved all of our kids in our new house planning. It's really interesting to hear their input on what they want us to have. The bigs have made many model homes for us on Minecraft. They are so cool. They all have lists of colors for bedrooms and things they'd like to see.
The first part, us getting out of our house, is completed. Next, we will get the rest of our items out via sale, family members, friends, donate, etc. Then we begin preparing to sell. We will paint the house and replace the carpet and then put the house on the market to sell. The ball is rolling and it's rolling pretty fast! We have been in the basement now for 5 days. So far it's going well. We are finding a place for our things and scrutinizing all the things we bring in the house.
I am trying to use this journey as an opportunity to live simply and intentionally. I am starting with this blog www.becomingminimalist.com. This sounds like a logical place to start right?? Join me on our journey. I'll be writing periodically about our challenges and our successes. I never thought I'd hear myself talk about becoming a minimalist, but I think I'm ready.
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