We Downsized Our Home by Half -- Minimalist Home Tour

What if the right home wasn't the biggest home, but it was the one that fit the life that you wanted to live? For us, that question came up after a job relocation, and it led us to downsize our home with four kids by nearly half. That was over a decade ago, and we've never looked back. You'll see how we've made this space work for our family, and I'll talk about what real life has looked like living in our downsized, minimalist home. If this is something you've thought about, this video will show you how downsizing your home and your stuff will actually allow you to upsize your life, because that's what it did for us. Have you ever had one of those moments that just stopped you in your tracks completely? It was like everything made perfect sense all of a sudden. That is exactly what happened to me as my husband and I were driving around our new community trying to find a place to live. All of a sudden, I looked over at him and I just said, what if we do something totally different, absolutely opposite of what we've been doing? And that was we were living in the suburbs, kind of out in the country in a big house. I said, what if we live closer to the city in a smaller, downsized house? This was our chance to change, and I am so glad that we did, because it changed the entire trajectory of how we lived, how we raised our kids. It's something I will never regret. So I just want you to know that it is okay to want less house. You don't need to keep up with everybody else's expectations. You just have to be intentional. It doesn't have to be extreme. It just has to be what is right for you. When I saw that I was going to have a fireplace, I couldn't believe it. I always wanted one. Now our house is a work in progress. Our cats actually destroyed our ottoman recently, and so we just replaced it with this IKEA coffee table, which I'm really excited about because it is functioning a lot better than the ottoman did. We also recently added this TV stand, which has been on my list for about five years. And now that it's here, it is so perfect. It's exactly what I'd hoped for. So here's a few questions to ask yourself to decide if downsizing your home is something that is going to be a good thing for you. Number one, are you managing spaces in your current home that you just don't ever use? That happens to a lot of people. Dining rooms are definitely one of those spaces. Sometimes we even have extra family rooms or those formal kind of living rooms that nobody ever goes to. And it's filled with furniture that we have to take care of. We have to vacuum and dust the space, but it's not something that's ever used. So we're actually paying for square footage that is just sitting there. And there's no value in that, right? Now number two, is your home helping you or holding you back? This is a hard one, right? Because we love our homes. They make us feel good. But if there's something that you're giving up because you have such a big home, is there something you're not doing that you always wanted to do, but your home is taking up all of your resources or your time or your energy, and you just don't have room for those other things that you want to do? And number three is, would having less space allow you to have more margin? And what I mean by that is, would you have more time? You could travel. You could read a book. Would it give you more peace in your life? Would it just allow you to relax because you're not taking care of a bunch of things that you wouldn't have to take care of otherwise? A big yard, for instance, that you have to spend time, you know, maybe even a couple of hours each week. Is that something that is taking your margin away from you? And with downsizing in that regard, maybe getting a house with a smaller yard, for instance, in my example, would that help you have more margin in your life for things that mean more to you? This is my 1950s stove I found secondhand, and I got it when we did our renovation of our kitchen, which, by the way, we waited for about three years to do just so that we could make sure it could be as functional and efficient as we needed it. I just am so thankful to my house for all of the gifts that it's given me. And it's not just that we live here, but it's other gifts as well. We have less bills. We have less stuff to take care of. We have less obligations. We don't have to clean so many things. And when we get a repair that has to happen, it's less. Just pretty much everything is less. Financial independence. I never thought in my life that I would be able to pay off our house, but we have. I never thought that I would make my way overseas, but I did last year for the very first time. The gift of being present. And not just more connection with my family, but more connection to myself. And I'm going to explain this one because it has been such a game changer. And that is to do something every single year that I'm terrified of, that I'm absolutely scared to death of, like hike a 13,000 foot mountain, finish my bachelor's degree, and start my YouTube channel. I would have never even had time to think about that if it weren't for living in my beautiful, downsized home that I love so much. This is our solarium, and it's my favorite room. It gets the most beautiful morning and evening light. One of my very favorite things to talk about is making space for what matters. It is something that is like a theme in our house because we have a downsized house. It's pretty much what you have to do. If you want to bring something in, you still want your house to feel good, you have to make space. So what did I let go of when I moved into this house? Well, a lot of stuff, obviously, because back in our big house, we didn't even think about it. We had the space. If it went into a closet or in a storage space or in the garage, it was there and out of sight, out of mind. But here is another story. So when we moved in, obviously, we had a lot of things that we had to declutter. And I either made some money on eBay by selling things or I just donated it, and it all worked out great. All of those things got a new home, basically. Back when we had our big house, we had two and a half bathrooms. We are down a whole full bath in this house. After being gone all day, it was a big game to see who was going to get in the bathroom first. Everybody would shout out, I call the bathroom, and we'd have to decipher who actually beat everybody else and is number one on the list. A funny thing that we let go of is convention, doing things the way that normal people do things. So I don't have room to hang stuff up, so I actually put it above on my curtain rods and just let things hang dry there. I also let it dry on my railing downstairs, and that's okay. Another thing I let go of is just in case storage. I had a two car garage. Actually, it was more like a two and a half car garage where I lived before. We had so much room for storage that I had shelving units lined up all along the perimeter. I had bikes on the walls and tools on the walls and just so many things. It was a lot. I had storage downstairs in my basement, just tons of closets. My storage in my room was incredible. I had an entire wall in my bedroom that was just lined with closets and even a linen closet. Here, not so much. So we definitely let go of having a lot of storage areas. Another thing that we had to declutter technically is we had to chop part of our couch, literally send it off to the upholstery place, and they had to chop off a section that was about this big so that it could fit in this room. And that left us with less space to sit down. But if we have visitors, we just sit on the floor or I take some chairs out of our solarium and it's worked just fine. And I'm so happy that I didn't let this small little family room here deter me from not choosing this house. If you're really thinking about downsizing, but you know that you're going to have to let go of some things if you're going to do it right, and you just don't know how to do it, you don't know where to begin, and you think, well, what if I regret something that I get rid of? Those are all legitimate things. Those are all legitimate concerns. But what I will tell you is maybe ask yourself this question. Is this item going to have a place in this home? Is this item going to serve me in this home? And if the answer is no, I can tell you, even though it might be a challenge to you, once it's gone, you're never going to think about it again. At least that's been my experience. So you might have some hard items that you're concerned about. And if you do, you're on the fence with them, hold on to them. But if you're just thinking, oh, I might use it someday, those are the kind of items that can just go. This room here is right off the kitchen. We call it the middle room or the island room. And I just think it has such a good vibe to it. We often gather around this island and have parties and just chit chat. Well, of course, you're probably thinking, would I do anything differently? Well, there is a couple of things that I've thought of for you. If you're contemplating this, that you can be aware of. The most thing that I would tell you that I would do differently is I would worry less about how my kids were going to adjust to living in a downsized home, to adjust living a little bit differently than people they knew or people that they were going to meet in their new community. And I thought I'm going to reassure you a little bit further because as a mom, that was such a big concern of mine. So I asked my kids for you, what is the one thing, the top thing that they learned from living in a downsized house? And here's their comments. Number one, I know how to share a space and communicate with others. It's made me realize I don't need a bunch of stuff. There's no need to pay for space you're not using. There's no value in that. And it made me really prioritize the things that I care about. And I just think, wow. So we downsized our house for a couple of reasons. One of the main reasons was so that we could travel more, but we also wanted to save money for our future. We wanted to have experiences with our kids and we just didn't want to have so much worry, right? I've already talked about some of those things, but little did I know that my kids were going to get so much value out of what we did. So if you are like me and you're a parent and you're just so concerned about your children and how they'll adjust, maybe these words will help you. I hope that they do. They really made me feel good. That's for sure. Another thing that I would say is think about how you use your spaces currently. And if you're using all of, let's say, an office or if you can downsize that office so that when you're looking at a new home, you would say, okay, I do need a little bit more space, or I'm only using 30% of this giant room that I use for my office. That's how you can qualify a house being a good choice for you or not. And for us, if I had to do it all over again, although I don't know that I could have made this choice because this house actually fit us perfectly other than this, but if I had a choice and it was available, I would have chosen to have one more full bathroom. Because as a family of six, it was the one thing that was a little bit tight for us. And if you add on top of that friends that visit or family members that come and visit, it would have been really nice to have another full bath. There was actually one time my sister came down with all four of her kids and we went hiking down at Red River Gorge. It's a beautiful spot if you're ever in Kentucky. And we all came home and we're all dirty from head to toe. We had been out hiking, you know, you can imagine, right? So there are, I think, nine or 10 of us at this point, and we all needed a bath. And so that is one instance that really could make a difference in my life if I had the extra bathroom. Another thing that I would say is to declutter big time before you leave your home. If you do this, it is just going to make life so much easier when you move into the new place. And I know we can't anticipate everything, but it's those things that you keep just in case that you know in your heart that you really don't need. That's the kind of stuff that I'm talking about. Go ahead and sell those at a garage sale before you ever leave, because that will make you not have to pack it, you won't have to unpack it, and you won't have to make a decision yet again. Keep that in mind if you're going to be moving into a downsized house. You really do need so much less than you think that you do. This is our beautiful room. I think it is so pretty. It's so soothing. It's so peaceful, and we have it that way on purpose. It just is one of those places that I can go and read a book and have some solitude. One thing that might be on your mind, and it was on mine, is will I outgrow this smaller home, especially if you have kids? Will you feel like you need more space as they get older, for instance? So we faced that. Actually, two of our kids have moved out at this point, and we didn't outgrow our house. We actually grew more into it. We just changed those spaces. We reinvented them, and they became something else. We didn't have spare rooms that were just not used for any purpose because our kids moved out. It's actually been awesome. My oldest had a bedroom downstairs, and when he moved out, we reinvented that space and made it into an exercise room slash second little family room area where my husband likes to go down and watch football or I like to go down on my treadmill, and it has worked out great. When our oldest daughter moved out, our younger one just took over the bedroom and made it her own. It looks like a little New York City apartment. I tell her I love it, that I would actually just move right on into this room. I just think it's so beautiful. We downsized our home, but what we really did was make space for what matters. If you've ever wondered what life would look like with fewer bills, less stress, and more connection, maybe this is your moment to do something different. Leave me a comment below and let me know what you would gain if you downsized your home. And if you've already downsized your home, make sure that you leave your experience in the comments and share it with others. If this resonated with you, please make sure that you subscribe to my channel for more inspiration and motivation on things that you can let go of to make space for what matters. Check out these next two videos that YouTube picked out just for you.