When we lived in Colorado we lived in a small wanna-be bungalow built in 1926. I loved it. I loved our neighborhood. I loved the house. I didn’t want it to be any bigger, even after we had 3 kids. I always said,
“I don’t want a bigger house, we’d just fill it with more stuff.”
Then we came to Michigan and looked at a house that we had fallen in love with online. Our first reaction in person wasn’t love, but we liked it enough that we came back and decided it was the house we wanted. We had it under contract before we went back to Denver, the same weekend we put our house on the market there.
We moved in before we even bought it and one of the things I noticed right away was that it seems like it’s always a huge mess.
There’s just so much room to make a mess, everything gets spread out!
Even my husband noticed. He was like,
“Have you noticed how messy this place gets?”
Um, yeah. Remember all those times I told you I didn’t want a bigger house? This is why.
We have a ton more counter space in the kitchen and when we were putting away boxes before moving in, my mom tried to keep one little corner clear. I’ve been trying to keep that same space clear since then because I want at least one portion of the counter that doesn’t have something on it.
My husband keeps putting stuff there.
Now, we are really happy with this house for so many reasons, but it is a big adjustment for sure.
It was especially hard because all of the real decluttering I’d always wanted to do happened when we put our house on the market. That’s another post in itself, but it comes down to this, we had help and we spent a lot of time on it.
We went from a small, neat, uncluttered space to a larger space with boxes, clutter, and no idea where to put things. It’s even worse because we didn’t own it when we moved and we weren’t sure how we were going to make that work, so we didn’t want to make any changes just in case everything fell through.
We haven’t even bought anything!
We were also a little strapped for cash, since we hadn’t really planned this out long term but rather made it happen in a few months.
I don’t like to buy much in the first place, and I don’t want to just go around buying a bunch of stuff for the house without a clear plan. The only things I have bought are things that we really need. Lightbulbs, batteries, toilet bowl brushes and a couple lamps.
I don’t want more stuff, but I know we will get some new things.
I’m going to ask for help planning that out though. Interior design is not my strong suit, but it is my mom’s (stepmom’s) so I will ask for her help and I will take my time.
I believe you can be a minimalist even in a bigger house. In fact, I think that’s even more reason to be minimalist. When you have more space, it’s even easier to fill it with stuff.
We’ll have to see how this plays out in the long term of course, but for now it’s made me even more committed to having only stuff that we need, use, love and enjoy.
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