Small House Hunting: An Update

Photo by Modern Nest Photography for Mother Mag

I looked back and it was March when I first wrote about House Hunting (or as Theo would say, House Huntin’ as he currently leaves the ‘g’ off of every ‘ing’). I thought I would give an update. We aren’t much closer to finding a new place than we were in March. We’ve been to multiple open houses and I have alerts set up for anything in our budget. We even fell in love with one place in a perfect neighbourhood that ended up being out of our budget.

Here’s what I’ve learned from looking at other places…. it all comes back to perspective and gratitude. Every place we look at has trade offs…. the neighbourhood is not quite right, or there are no closets, there’s a big living room but no outdoor space, the flooring is awful or it’s north facing and dark. It’s been easy for me to find things wrong with a new home. And the more I look the more, I realize we get so many things we want/need from our current space. And there’s also weighing the benefit of extra space against the added expenses that could result in more financial stress for our family.

As of right now, our kids are still not asking for privacy on a regular basis. Trevor and I have managed to find a rhythm to allow each other space and alone time despite our close quarters. Funny story, recently in the evenings, Trevor has been sitting on the patio or quickly putting headphones in once the kids were in bed. I was a bit hurt so I asked him if something was wrong or if I had done something to offend him? He said that he had listened to my podcast interview on Upbringing and hadn’t realized that as an introvert I needed more time alone so he was trying to be better at giving that to me (sob! You can find the episode here).

I realized that part of my reason for looking for a new home was external pressure to do so. Or maybe not external pressure but my own internal pressure for change, for new, for that next thing. Which is exactly what I’m always writing about not needing. And here I am feeling that our one bedroom is not good enough. When I mention to friends or acquaintances that we are shopping around, I get this knowing nod and look, like of course you are looking for a new place. And this helps confirm for me that deep down everyone thinks we are a little bit crazy for how we live. And maybe we are bit crazy but I think it’s a good crazy.

So I’m going to keep looking for that perfect two bedroom that is within a reasonable budget (hahaha nothing in Vancouver is reasonable by the way) but more so I am going to focus on all that we do have in our current small apartment. And redirect my energy to the small things I can do to improve our space; our closets always come to mind first. I know there will come a time where we will decidedly outgrow this apartment but that time isn’t quite here.