There is a big little discussion in our home right now. Yesterday, our apartment complex left us a care package on our door with information inside about renewing our lease. We must decide in a month whether we would like to continue living there, or if we want to move elsewhere. First of all, I can’t believe it’s already time to consider this. Second of all, I have no idea what we should do.
Our lease is up in February, and we will once again be free if we want to be. Right now, we are exploring two options. The first is to stay where we are. The second is to downsize – potentially move to a carriage house that is one-third as big as our current place.
That seems so much more drastic when I write it down than it is in my head.
Why would we do this? There are several reasons. We need to get rid of a lot of stuff. We want to save for Aaron’s thesis film which is quickly approaching. We wouldn’t be in the carriage house situation for that long. And we want to save as much money as we can before Aaron graduates from film school because we have no idea where we will be moving after Tallahassee. If we move somewhere with a high cost of living, e.g. Los Angeles, we want to have a significant amount saved, and this would help us in that. This would cost us significantly less than we’re currently paying in rent alone. We’d have cable TV, internet and all of our utilities paid for each month all for $150 less than we are paying in rent alone now. Which sounds amazing, BUT…
There are drawbacks. As I said, it’s a carriage house, which means it’s smaller than our 2BR/2BA apartment. Smaller, as in MUCH, MUCH smaller. It’s a studio apartment, which means we would live in one big space, and I don’t know if it’d be conducive to Aaron’s productivity to not have a space dedicated to Film School. In our current apartment, this is the second bedroom/office, which I should take pictures of just to show you how D2s and thesis development exploded. I’m not crazy about our kitchen, bedroom, living room and office being in ~500 sq. ft., though I admittedly like the challenge of having and living with less stuff.
A lot, lot, lot less stuff. In fact, the only dedicated room in the entire area is a bathroom. That means everything else would have to be in the great room: the kitchen, living, and sleeping areas would all have to morph.
Oh, me. I don’t know. But I would LOVE to know your thoughts. What do you think?
I’ll probably have a few follow-up posts on this as we look into it.
If anybody knows (or knows of) any carriage houses for rent in Tallahassee, please let me know! We have three that we know are for rent in an area of town that we really love, but I think word-of-mouth sometimes works better for recommendations, or, if you know of some amazing and amazingly priced property, pass that along too. J
2 comments:
I've never truly downsized before (although I will probably consult with you before I do this summer), but I think that, while it might be a bit of a sacrifice (space-wise) for a year or so, the money you would save in the long run would more than make up for it. Peace of mind always outweighs an extra bathroom :) And there are lots of ways you could partition a space off for Aaron to do his work if that's a concern - having less space would mean you could do more with the your "decorating" budget!
You can do it. If downsizing and saving money is the ticket, then go for it. I moved from my 2/1 into a 2/2 with a roommate that already had the house full -- which means the majority of my stuff that filled a 2/1 had to fit in my bedroom : ) There is always a small storage unit too - for things you don't want to part with/can't fit (like furniture). I'll probably be dealing with the same scenario in July when I somehow move myself and [some] stuff to Puerto Rico haha.
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