Giving Up the McMansion: Downsizing Your Home
Perhaps it’s the impending feeling of loss knowing my oldest daughter graduates from high school next month and will head to college in the Fall. After that, we’ll only have four more years until the youngest also flies the coop. The house already feels too big. Too much to clean. Too much yard to mow and trim. Too much stuff. High utility bills.
I’ve been thinking for some time about moving into a smaller home and a post that appeared in The Digerati Life really gives me reason to continue that thought trend. Living in a Small House: The Pros and Cons of of Downsizing Our House gives me the ammunition to bring the thought tickling my brain to full discussion mode at home.
The biggest pro:
The financials! Our mortgage payment on the smaller place is within a few dollars of the payment on the larger place — the difference is that it’s only a 15-year note as opposed to thirty, and we hope to have it paid off in five years or less. We are also looking forward to lower utility bills and upkeep costs.
But there are also cons. This one really spoke to me since my mother-in-law also lives with us:
I no longer have a “buffer” — that space we’d like to preserve for ourselves while at home. When the spouse gets annoying (you know yours ticks you off from time to time, too), it’s harder to get away from him. Not only that, our large home had two stories, and the new place has only one floor. So stomping off in a huff loses some of its drama without the stairs.
I need my buffer zone (not that I’d ever stomp off in a huff - ha). Maybe I can find someone to trade homes with in a year or three.
Photo by Visulogic from Flickr Creative Commons.
