RIGHT SIZING OUR FAMILY

Spencer and I built our Ryan Home in 2012, the year we got married. We knew this would be a wonderful home for a few years but eventually, we would move. Eight years later and that time is now. On a whim we first listed our house for sale in September 2019. After our first offer fell through we pulled our house off the market until after the holidays. We listed our house for sale on a Saturday in January and that following Monday we were under contract! Woohoo right?!?! Right! However, we didn’t have a plan as to where we were going next. But we were excited about embarking on a new adventure! One that, truth be told, happened a little faster than we expected.

WHY DID WE DECIDE TO SELL OUR HOUSE?

At this point in our lives, we are seeking FREEDOM! What freedom means for us is having the freedom to create our own schedule, to be obligated to minimal monthly expenses, to have the flexibility to get up and go when the opportunity is right. These changes for us didn’t happen overnight… they had been years in the making. We first took small steps like canceling our cable subscription and creating monthly budgets. Followed by bigger steps like taking a six-week sabbatical to New Zealand and Australia as well as starting our own businesses. All of these decisions over time led us to know that it was time we sold our house and right-size our life!  

WHAT IS RIGHT-SIZING?

Many may deem what we are doing as downsizing but we call it RIGHT-SIZING! We are taking intentional steps towards getting our family on the right path to the freedom we seek which will allow us to prioritize our family! Our right-sizing consists of a massive purge of things. Over eight years we accumulated so much stuff! We didn’t realize how all our things had become a burden of time and quite suffocating on our lives. Reducing the square footage where we would live reduces the amount of things you can have as well as the time spent on tasks or chores that don’t bring us value.

THE GREAT PURGE

As I mentioned we had accumulated A LOT of stuff! So much so that I packed an entire room turned custom closet floor to ceiling and still had an overflow items in other rooms. Our basement was as big as the main level in the house and became our little hoarding paradise. We used to be able to shoot our bows 10 feet in our basement and got to the point where you could barely walk 10 feet. With all our stuff came a lot of weight! The ridiculous excess was dragging us down. We started purging when we first listed our house for sale in the fall of 2019. We made decent progress but it wasn’t until after the New Year that we really embraced letting go of items. The toughest parts for us were the emotional connections to our things and the value we perceived it to have vs. what someone was willing to pay for it. It’s definitely an eye-opener when your items don’t sell that are priced 25-50% off their initial price or for a dollar. All in all we sold a lot, gifted a lot, donated a lot and still kept a lot. Our mindset is shifting and we are all about collecting more memories and less things!

If you take on purging soon, remember it’s a process… there is no right or wrong. Like us, you’ll probably keep more than you should but it’s about progress and starting somewhere! 

SO WHERE ARE WE GOING ALREADY?

For the past year, we have loosely been discussing options like buying a property in the county surrounding Baltimore, moving to the city, heading south to the Raleigh, NC area and traveling west a bit for something really new. Ultimately our goal is to travel the country as a family living where the magic happens where adventure and opportunity meet. As much as we would like to just pick up and go we still have a lot of work to do. Moving out of our house will be no easy task so we decided to stay local for a few months in a nearby apartment complex.

WHAT’S NEXT?

We take action! Once we move into the apartment we will take a small break to breathe and enjoy some much needed family time! Since the beginning of the year we have just been running from week to week with work and our big move. We can only take a pause though because next up is budget planning, finding an RV, researching places of interest, setting up our business and route planning. Ultimately our goal is to be on the road in July where Mother Nature will be our home, our office and Kade’s classroom too!

Ready to read more? Next up our most unexpected adventure.