We Have Moved!

Guess what? We moved! 

            I know. I know. I can hardly believe it myself! It all happened SO FAST. 

Two weeks ago, we moved out of our sweet first home and into a small rental property. Huh? We moved from big to small, from owning to renting, from a nicer neighborhood to a lower income neighborhood. It literally seems like we are swimming against the current! 

If you have been following along here for a while, you know that we have always been a little bit interested in investment properties. This has been a small dream that over the years has grown bigger and bigger. We took the first tiny step into this when we opened our own Airbnb in our basement. We operated that for almost a year and decided to close it down when Ezra was born (more on that in a minute). After seeing the success of running our own Airbnb and how much we both loved it, we knew we wanted to take the next step to owning more properties to rent out. Last summer, we even found a property that we were about two minutes from owning. No, literally…two minutes away from signing the papers that would make it ours, and it fell through. We even had our house on the market with no luck in selling it. It was only on the market for six weeks, and then we took it off the market because Ezra’s arrival was quickly approaching. Showings were incredibly stressful while trying to live in the house, parent the kids, and run the Airbnb. After six weeks, we took our house off the market and also closed our Airbnb so that I could focus on just having a baby and adjusting to parenting three. Running the Airbnb has been incredible and we are so glad for the opportunity that it has brought into our lives, but it was also affecting our family in some negative ways. The fact that the Airbnb was in our basement was incredibly convenient for cleaning and maintaining, but it was not working for our family’s personal space. Our children are noisy children, and they are also very energetic children. I found myself constantly nagging and telling the kids to STOP PLAYING and STOP JUMPING and STOP SHOUTING simply because I was trying to teach them to respect the people who were living below us (and leaving a review on their experience of living below us). Theo and I realized after a few months of this that it was not fair to our kids to take away their play just to make a few extra bucks a month. That was ultimately the decision that led us to close our Airbnb. However, we knew that we wanted to continue to run our own rental properties- Airbnb or rental. We just wanted said properties to be at least a few feet outside of our own family’s space. And so began our search for a house to rent while we sold our home. 

It may appear from the outside that this was a quick and sudden move, but in reality, it’s been in our minds for a while. When we found a small house to rent, we decided to sign the lease and start packing and moving right away! We moved within a week and are loving our new little place. Our house right now is 950 sq ft- about half the size of the house we have lived in for that last four years! We will rent here for about a year while we get our house sold and look for a new property to buy that more closely aligns with our dream to pursue investment properties. To be honest, we aren’t even sure what that looks like yet, but we have a few options and ideas that we will be pursuing. In the meantime, until our house sells, we did reopen our Airbnb so that we can continue to make a little income to help pay our double bills (the house and the rental house). This means I’m usually hauling the kids to and from our two houses to clean. 

We are getting settled into a more simplified lifestyle in our 950 sq ft. Since it is still bitterly cold, we have not been able to explore the neighborhood much, but we have found a fantastic park that is within walking distance! We are also still enjoying being close to everything that we were close to before- the library, church, parks and grocery shopping, just to name a few! We decided when we moved to this house to not pay for internet. It’s been an adjustment for sure, especially for me as I’m home all day, but we are actually enjoying the “retreat” that no internet at home affords. However, it does make it a little more challenging to get blog posts and social content out there. I hope that you will continue to be patient with me as we work through these adjustments, and read along as we embark on new and crazy adventures!