Down-sizing, or adjusting to living in a small space

Originally written on: 08 Sep 2005

I used to live in a house in a large metropolitan area.

It was what real estate people call a "starter" house, just right for beginning a family. My husband and I managed to raise all five kids to teenage-hood in the same 1300 square foot house, and I lived there for 23 years. I survived two deaths in the family, married off a son, and saw my children leave, one by one, except for the youngest. One of my older sons moved back in, so we were three in the household. I joked that I'd have to sell my house to get them to leave. I was kidding.

Then, out of the blue, someone wanted to buy my house because it has a huge cul-de-sac lot, and they had growing kids.

Over the course of the next few months, I decided to sell to my oldest son and his wife, and after a horrendous down-sizing process, moved to the tiny mobile home in the mountains that I'd bought four years before as a "writing retreat."

The mobile has roughly 700 sq ft inside, sits on a lot in a heavily-treed, rustic mobile home park 100 miles from my former home, and is actually about the right size for one person.

Except that there was no room for essentials like food storage, heaps of office supplies, and paper products. Not having room for a storage shed, I've had to rent a couple of storage lockers until I can conquer the boxes--both in them, and in my formerly neat "retreat."

Sigh...

More later.