Falling in love all over again

I'll be honest, one of the reasons I started this blog was out of a desire to stay satisfied and remind myself of all the reasons I love my home.

I love my home. I really do. But after six years, I am starting to look past all the things that I love and only see the imperfections and the shortcomings.

Kind of like a relationship, right?

So now I am making an effort to a) fall in love all over again and b) fix the things that drive me crazy so I don't have to stare at them anymore.

Have you ever been in the same situation?

I've found that the biggest thing that helps is to stop comparing my house to other houses. Pinterest is a double-edged sword. On one hand, you can dig a pit of despair from scrolling and scrolling through perfect dream home boards and comparing them to yours. But on the other hand, you can take those awesome ideas and tweak them so that they work just right in your home! 

Another thing I'm doing is tackling all the little projects that have been bugging me for years but haven't seemed like a big enough deal to get fixed--like the two unused satellite dishes on our house with miscellaneous wires draped and hanging all over. No one else seemed to notice, but I hated driving up to the house and seeing those stupid satellite dishes. We hadn't bothered having them removed because they weren't doing any harm (except to my sanity). But when I finally sprang to have them removed, I felt so much better! Just a little at a time. 

Finally, I ask myself what it is I really want. Do I really want to move, or am I just feeling like it's time to move because we've been here our five years? The answer is that I don't want to move--we love our house and our neighborhood!--but I get trapped into thinking that we need to move because that's what we planned. Are we really outgrowing our house, or do I just feel that way because it's how I've been conditioned? That one's easy--we're definitely not outgrowing the house. I don't feel cramped at all!

If you follow me on instagram (you should) you might have noticed that I post lots of pictures of our house with #prettylittlehome. We always say "Goodbye, pretty little home, we'll see you in a little bit!" as we drive away. Even with the chipped paint and the old siding and the baseboards that need to be painted and the tacky 80s metal bannister, we are still so happy to be in our pretty little home.

Choosing to live small (in a supersized world)

We took it as a given that we would live in our first home for five years before moving on to something "bigger and better"--after all, that's what everyone does, right? 
Our house is typically considered a starter home, which means it's not very big or fancy. We had a two-year-old and a 10-month-old when we moved in. 
Five years went by.
Then another year.
Meanwhile, we'd had two more children but our house had not gotten any bigger. The five years were up, but we were just as happy as ever in our starter home.
Now what?
We don't want to uproot our children when they are much older and further along in school, so we didn't take this decision lightly; it feels like a now or never situation. Either we move into something bigger now, while they're still fairly young, or we commit to living in our smaller home until our children are out of the house.
We decided to stay put.
Our grandparents raised larger families in smaller houses; people all over the world still do. That's what I tell people (and myself, sometimes) when they wonder out loud if we're looking for something bigger.
It comes down to priorities. For us, our number one priority is staying in our neighborhood and that means staying in our smaller home for now. We've made the conscious choice that we want other things instead of a bigger house--and that's ok!