To Move or Not To Move...

Kevin and I have an adorable Wash Park townhome that we love. It was updated before we moved in and it's only 5 blocks from Wash Park which is a fantastic location. We are two blocks from Wild Oats and a little cafe, 4 blocks from the light rail station and we're about 3 blocks from an I-25 entrance which is super-convenient for our commutes. We have concrete countertops (which according to HGTV is very "in the now..."), original hardwood floors, french doors into Maelin's room, original tile in the kitchen and bathroom and an European feel on the outside. We also love our neighbors. (my neighbor Anne brought me gelato from the gelato place which is also just a few blocks away last week without me even asking her!) Our place was built in 1910 so it has great character and we LOVE it.

So, why would we move now in this horrible housing market? I'll tell you why: we have 880 sq feet upstairs and 200 sq ft downstairs in the basement (which we only use for laundry, cats and storage.)

We knew we wouldn't be able to stay here forever but I thought we could just power through having a tiny house with two adults and one growing baby. People in New York do it all the time, right?

Turns out, it's driving me CRAZY! Upon reflection, I think it's one of the things that's fueling my depression: not having anywhere do do anything sucks. Just to put Maelin on the floor to let her roll around takes a herculean feat of engineering: we have to move the coffee table into the kitchen or on top of the couch and then we have to jump over the couch onto the rug and then sit around her. Then we have to put everything back (keep in mind I'm tripping over bouncy seat and bumbo and all sorts of stuff while we're doing this.)

Chores are fun. I usually fold the laundry upstairs on the coffee table...it's the only place where I can spread it out and organize it. However, I was putting some pictures into albums yesterday and I had to try to put the laundry on top of my pictures and then they all fell over from the weight and I burst into tears because I do that now at a drop of a hat and threw the laundry across the room in frustration.

See why we need to move????

So we drove around the last two weekends looking at which neighborhoods we would like and it turns out...not many. We like downtown! We like the neighborhood feel of Wash Park and we like the way the houses are brick and different: we also like being so close to everything. How do we compromise with the space we need but keep the downtown feel?

We think we've found something though. We decided we like Englewood...it's about 30 blocks south of us so it's still close to everything and it has a pretty nice feel to it. The houses aren't as big as what we would find in other subdivisions, but we think they'll be big enough for what we need:

I want at least 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. I want a yard with a fence. I want a garage. I want a basement where there's room for Maelin to roll around and we can childproof it and where there's space for Kevin to have a "man room". We think we've found that in Englewood and the kicker is this: some of the houses we've looked at cost THE SAME amount as what we paid for our tiny bit of Wash Park.

So now we've got to get our house staged and sold. I'll get busy on that. Wish me luck...