I'm such a planner, and maybe to a fault. I'm one of those 3 moves ahead, crossing that bridge, counting those chickens kind of gal. I'm cautious.
But lately, I've been trying to push myself to live in the now, plan for the now. When we bought our home as newleyweds with no children, I was already concerned about how this 3 bedroom, 1.5 bath, 1400 sq foot home would be able to hold all of our life. So in my mind, our home has always had an expiration date.
Then we had our daughter a year ago, and my mind started immediately planning for the future. This house couldn't possibly hold all three of us, and if we plan to have more (and we always talked about having two kids) then I had to plan our evacuation route ASAP.
The problem is this house is plenty big for the three of us (more on that soon), but I'm always too busy worried about the next 20 years and how our life will play out in this house.
So if you are like me, we need to STOP planning our lives away, it's unrealistic and will drive us crazy. Reasonably plan for 5-7 years when making home decisions, you never know what life will bring and trying to plan 20 years down the road will only set you up for disaster.
It's also ok to wait for a home to get too big, or too small and then come up with a remedy,let life dictate these decisions and not silly worries. Just a reminder to myself to live in the now.
Thank you for posting this. I'm working on this, as well.
ReplyDeleteMy husband and I have a 6-month-old. Our neighborhood doesn't have the best schools, nor the worst. We have lived in our house for 9 years. Our plan was to live here about 5, knowing it would probably slip closer to 10 years. I would like to know where we plan to move next, to give our daughter the best of everything. Right now that means staying put and living within our means. Thank you for the reminder!
Linda I'm so happy this helped. We have a 1 year old and there's plenty of time. We are actually in a great school system, it's like # 17 out of 742 schools in ny so we are lucky. But the actual house isn't huge. But it's plenty, I keep reminding myself that I only think I need more space bc that's what I see in blogs and tv and friends houses. We have a small home and we are a close knit family who spend all their time together, that's a great thing, we dont need a big house : )
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