As most of you know we have recently sold and bought a new (to us) house. This is the 4th house we have owned together in 5 years….. CRAZY!!!

2 years ago we purchased our “forever home”. It was a beautiful, 2 storey house situated in the nicest part of our city. 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, amazing kitchen, 2 car heated garage, and a basement with the potential for another bedroom, bathroom and large living room. What more could you want!? It was seriously the perfect home for us and our kids (which didn’t even exist yet!)

Then EVERYTHING changed in the blink of an eye. Without time to prepare, plan, or even digest it, we were parents. Our world was turned upside down and everything we thought we wanted or needed was no longer. The only thing that mattered was the happiness, health, development, and well being of our son.

About 6 months after we got Jaxson we had to sit down and have a serious discussion. What were our dreams, goals, our wishes for our family and how do we want our children to be raised? Instantly, without thought we knew that we want our children to have experiences. We want to raise our kids how we were raised. We want to take them places, travel, see the world. We want to stay home to raise our kids, not pay to have someone else do it for us. We want our kids to get the best of us, not the leftovers after a long crappy shift at an emotionally draining job. We also want Alex to be able to go to school to pursue her dream job. That takes lots of time and lots of money!

In a perfect world we would be wealthy. We would have all the means to travel, to show our kids cool things, to stay home, AND to have the nice big house, drive the expensive cars and have all the cool toys. but that is not the case! Of course we could make it work. Have someone work endless hours to pay the bills, pay off debts and start savings, with no money left over to live the life we want. That sounds like a miserable existence to me!

We knew what we had to do in order to live the life we want, to raise our kids the way we want, and to of course adopt more kids, because that is definitely not cheap. DOWNSIZE!!!

And so we began this adventure. We sold the dream home, and bought our new dream home. It’s a small dream home. It’s cozy, and quaint. There’s no escaping or distancing from anyone in our dream home. We are happiest when we are close, and close is what we are. Our dream home is very easy to clean and keep tidy (a bonus to living smaller). Did I mention the huge yard for our kids (and me!) to jump on their trampoline, swing on the swingset, build snowmen and snow forts??

We may not be able to accommodate out of town guests. Our children will have to share rooms. There is no room for crazy amounts of toys and kid things. I will eventually have no choice but to give up my career with no turning back. But these are very small sacrifices to live the life we want to live. To have financial freedom to travel and give our kids crazy cool experiences.

I will be the first to admit that in the beginning I was VERY much against downsizing for many reasons. The big one being the fact that I despise moving, and the thought of having to do it yet again was absolutely horrifying. After watching shows of people living VERY small (which I still think they are crazy for doing it), and getting inspiration from one of my Down syndrome mommy friends, I started to warm up to the idea. Within a month I was totally on board and we threw that for sale sign up on our front lawn.

It’s been one month into our downsizing adventure and ZERO regrets! So far it has been a very freeing experience. Just simply downsizing our stuff (LOTS AND LOTS OF STUFF!) was an amazing feeling. Getting rid of all that clutter and useless stuff was not only physically satisfying, but emotionally freeing. While we have yet to enjoy the financial benefits of downsizing I can already tell it won’t take long to notice the shift in our bank accounts. With the idea of being forced back into the job that I so desperately want to escape not looming over my head I feel happy, and free.

While living smaller may not be for everyone, I HIGHLY recommend doing it. Maybe you don’t need to go to the lengths of moving, but start with getting rid of all your crap. Trust me, you have lots of useless, expensive stuff that takes up room in your life and in your soul. Try it. I promise you won’t regret it!