It’s been a year…

My home.

It’s hard to believe that it has been a year since I made the decision to downsize and sell the home where I raised my kids and lived for 23 years. The good news is that I am still pinching myself about living in this house and I have completely fallen in love with my new neighborhood and yes, my new life.

How I ended up here feels like it happened so quickly (which, in truth, it did) while at the same time feels like it unfolded exactly as it needed to unfold. In hindsight, I can see that there was a strong sense of knowing that this was the right decision for me and that helped me not indulge my typical second-guessing and overthinking. Definitely not my usual way of making decisions!

Looking back, I can see that this process started at the end of May (2022), I had gone up to Vermont to help Kyle move into a new apartment. I ended up having to come home early when Jezzabelle took a turn for the worse and, unfortunately, I had to make the decision to let her go (she had been going downhill for awhile, so not a complete surprise but still hard). I can see now that Jez’s passing allowed me to more consciously consider something that I had only subconsciously be aware of—that maybe it was time to look for a smaller place here in the Northern Virginia area.

I had felt for awhile that my current place was too big now that the kids were no longer living with me but I had always assumed that I wouldn’t downsize until I was ready to move out of the area. Partly because I knew that Jez would not be able to handle a move but mostly because I assumed that it would be hard to find a smaller place given how much housing prices had gone up. Through pure luck of timing we had bought the house in 1999, a year before the start of the housing bubble that eventually burst in 2008. Not to mention, I had just refinanced earlier that year to a 2.5% interest rate.

Sometime mid-June, I decided that maybe I should at least see what was out there, but I assumed that it would probably take up to a year—if I was even able to find a place. In the meantime, I headed out to Ocean City over July 4th for a couple of weeks. When I got home, I reached out to Megan’s mom, Katy, who is a realtor and asked if she would be interested in helping me see what was out there (again, with the caveat that I was still not 100% sure I wanted to move.) She was absolutely on board (side note: how lucky am I that we not only welcomed Megan to our family, but that Katy and I have become wonderful friends as well!)

That night, I came across a listing for an adorable 1920s house in the Del Ray neighborhood of Alexandria (my physical therapist is in Del Ray and I had often walked around the area after my sessions. I loved the houses and the neighborhood so figured that it would be as good a place as any to start my search.)

The house had a cute screened-in front porch overlooking a small garden (complete with a white picket fence!) The inside was wonderfully updated and had built-in bookshelves incorporated into a fantastic staircase that divided the main living area. The only drawback was that it was 900 sqft (with 2 bedrooms and only 1 bathroom)—a big difference from my current 4 bedroom, 3.5 bathroom house. But it was really cute, so I sent the link to Katy with a note that while this was too small, it was the style I was looking for. She asked if I wanted to go take a look at it anyways. I decided that it couldn’t hurt.

Katy set up the time and we met up on Monday. The whole time, I was convinced that it was going to be way too small. It did not have a driveway or even much of a back yard (there is only 3’ 9” between the house and the neighbor’s yard behind it). And then we walked in.

I realized very quickly that it did not feel small at all! The main living area felt very open with the stairs adding a beautiful architectural element. The kitchen had a very similar vibe to what I had been thinking about doing in my current kitchen (which desperately needed an update.) It had original wood floors and original solid wood panel doors. The two bedrooms and the bath upstairs were small, but felt very cozy. The windows had just been replaced/upgraded in January and it had a new tankless water heater. And that porch!

All of a sudden, I realized that this house might actually be perfect for me. Which also felt completely crazy. It was literally the first house I looked at. And while it didn’t feel as small as I had thought, it was definitely much smaller than my current house. This would be a major change.

So I left undecided, but I could not stop thinking about it. I decided to come back on Tuesday at 5pm to walk around the neighborhood and get a feel for what it felt like in the evening when there was more traffic and more people were home. I talked to a neighbor who was outside (who only had good things to say). I checked out the library (right across the street on the opposite corner from the house). I walked by the Mount Vernon Community School (right behind the library) where there were a lot of families hanging out on the playground. I walked a couple of blocks to Mount Vernon Avenue which has lots of local shops and restaurants. All in all, this felt like a neighborhood full of life.

Katy had invited me to a family barbeque that evening so I headed over there and shared pictures of the place with Jay and Megan. At that point, I was still on the fence—I really loved it but it felt like such a huge leap.

Since it was the first house I had looked at, later that night, I decided to look up all the houses that had sold in Del Ray over the previous year to get a feel for the types of houses that typically came available in the area. There was only one house that I might have considered and even then, I definitely liked this one better.

I had recently heard Glennon Doyle talk about the idea of a “whole body yes” when trying to make decisions. The idea is to get out of your head and get a sense of what your body is trying to tell you. As someone who often has difficulty tapping into my body’s wisdom, I was surprised to get a very clear signal: an absolute whole body yes (the actual thought I had was: oh shit. I’m going to do this!). My brain however was not quite ready to hear that—it was was still stuck on making all sorts of arguments as to why this was an absolutely crazy thing to do. Could I really downsize by that much? How would that work? What would I do with all my stuff? Could I live without a garage or even a driveway? Without a backyard?

By Wednesday, I had worked through a lot of the logistical aspects and come to the conclusion that I would not miss the driveway or my very big backyard (my old lot was a bit of a unicorn—a 1.3 acres lot inside the beltway). But I was still feeling extremely anxious and scared to make a decision. I asked Katy if we could go back to look at it again and she set up an appointment for the next day.

That night, as I found myself feeling even more panicky and as I tried to sit with the anxiety that was coming up, I realized that what I was truly afraid of was making a decision of this magnitude and then regretting it. The subconscious narrative that I was telling myself was that this had to be my forever home and that made the decision feel incredibly overwhelming. Of course, that was unknowable, hence the anxiety.

As I started interrogating that narrative, though, I began to feel more at peace. Did I have to make a decision that I would have to live with forever? What if I shortened the timeframe a bit? Could I see myself happy in this house for at least 5 years? After all, even though I had lived in my house for 23 years, many other people moved after much shorter time periods for a variety of reasons. That was exactly what I needed to take the pressure off. I absolutely knew I could be happy there for 5 years (and probably longer.)

By the time I met up with Katy on Thursday to do my 2nd walkthrough, I had made up my mind. I was going to put an offer in. She went home and drew up the paperwork basically offering list price (this was happening just as the market was starting to shift out of the crazy COVID sellers market period.) We had a brief scare when we thought another offer was going to come in (it had been on the market for 11 days by that point) but it ended up not being an issue and I got the house!

So basically, a process that I had thought would take at least a year (if at all) ended up taking less than a week. I don’t think I have ever made this big of a decision this quickly. And (once I worked through those initial worries) I—amazingly—have never second guessed myself about it.

Of course, making the offer was just the beginning of the whirlwind. I still had to figure out how to sell my current house and what to do with over 23 years of accumulated “stuff”. In a nutshell, I closed on my new place on August 11, moved in on August 18 and then immediately jumped into cleaning out and selling my old house which closed on October 31st.

But I’ll save those details for future posts. For now, I just wanted to take a moment to reflect on what it took to get me here. Those 4 months were definitely a crazy period with so much to do, but oh, so worth it. So much has unfolded since then and in many ways, it has only been recently that I feel as if I have really settled in.

And I’ll take it!

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