1. Small mortgage. This really can't be overstated. It is awesome to be able to easily afford our mortgage each month, and in fact pay extra. It allows us to go on vacations, go out to eat, save for retirement (and for travel, our next house, emergency fund, car and home maintenance, and any other fund Ben has created that I don't know about), and much much more.
2. 2 car garage. This is one of those things that you don't realize how good you have it til it's gone. Or until you see someone who doesn't have it. We never have to deal with parking on the street. In St. Paul, when there is a snow emergency, of which there have been 3 or 4 this winter, you cannot park on the street at all until it is fully plowed. [Edited - According to my sister, there have actually been EIGHT snow emergencies this year. DAMN!] For us, that would mean about 3 days after it snows, since apparently our street is about the last to be plowed. In winter, having a garage is pretty much the best thing ever. Ben derives great pleasure from watching people brush the snow off their cars as he is driving Annie to daycare. I wouldn't go THAT far, but of course it is nice to not have to do that. We originally thought the ceiling in our garage was too low to install a garage door opener and were just pulling it open and closed for the first few years. Thankfully, we finally actually had someone come out to check it out and we found that we COULD get an opener, which makes the garage actually awesome to have instead of sort of annoying. This combined with my remote car starter makes me a much happier woman every morning! Also, it provides Ben a place to do his winter brewing so I don't have to smell his nasty beer.
3. No alley and an extra wide street. This is quite rare in the city. I love how private and safe our backyard feels without an alley, and the fact that we have an extra wide street where you never have to pull to the side to get 2 cars to drive at once.
4. Forced air heat and central air. Another rarity in older homes. Many pre-war homes have hot water heat, and thus have radiators that take up valuable space in rooms, making it harder to arrange furniture. I L-O-V-E that we have forced air heat, and when we finally got a new central air unit a few years ago? We hit the heating/cooling nirvana. Or something like that :) Now, the air doesn't quite reach up into our bedroom very well given the fact that there is only one vent, so we still do use a window unit up there, but the downstairs stays nice and cool.
This room may be larger than it appears due to my wide angle lens, aka a small home's BFF
5. Front porch. I don't think words can even express how much I love our front porch. We are out there every weekend morning, and nearly every weeknight during the summer, even more so now that we have Annie. We get to watch the world go by without the bugs, and on comfortable furniture. After having a front porch, it would make me extremely sad to not have one in our next house. This is one of the main reasons I get down on our house in the winter - because our favorite room in the house isn't even usable then!
6. Neighbors. You know how much we love our neighbors. I don't think I even need to go into that again. We can see into Nate and Molly's kitchen from our kitchen window and can view Mia on Channel A of our baby monitor, so it would be quite awkward to NOT like them. I realize we pretty much hit the neighbor jackpot with them, and the fact that we randomly had kids at the same time made it even better. Then we found our other neighbors (through internet stalking, of course, not just going up and saying hello) and it became even better. Who needs other friends when you can just step in your backyard and have people there instantly?! Just kidding, other friends, you know I love you all too :)
7. Convenient to everything. While we don't live in the cutest of neighborhoods, we are within walking distance to a coffee shop, a park, a hair salon, and a few not very good restaurants. More notably, we are less than 10 minutes from both downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul, 5 blocks from our daycare, 5 minutes from 2 Targets and a mall, and much much more. Our neighborhood really is SO convenient to anywhere we want to go because of close freeway access. There are a ton of cuter and nicer neighborhoods in the cities, but some are a pain in the butt to get to because of those pesky lakes. Not to mention the fact that homes there are obviously also much more expensive.
8. Close to a park. The aforementioned park we are one black away from really is beautiful. While there is no lake. it has a large playground, several swingsets, and beautiful old trees. I love walking through there on a hot summer afternoon.
9. Beautiful woodwork. When we started searching for homes, I found myself drawn to pre-war homes, in that they were built prior to World War II. These homes had many more unique touches and beautiful woodwork. Our house is really a standard pre-war house and has original hardwood floors throughout the main level, a built in buffet, and beautiful dark wood trim and windows. The built in buffet really is what does it for me - without that, not only would we have nowhere to store our dishes and glassware, but we'd also have kind of a blah home. With it, we get to call our home "charming" :)
10. A full basement. And I mean, FULL. We have so much crap down there, it is insane. This is a project we need to tackle this summer, but this storage space is KEY. I love that we can actually walk freely down there with the ceiling height, the walls are not crumbling, and there is plenty of space. I've seen some other basements of old homes, and hoo boy. Ours doesn't look so bad. Also good during a possible tornado when you need to bring the baby to sleep somewhere safe.
11. In the city. I truly do love living in the city. I am now a city snob. I just can't help it. I can certainly see the appeal of a home in the suburbs, especially when I look at the amount of house you can get for the money there, and the rate at which their roads get plowed. I get it. It's really not that much farther to drive places. But... but. There is SOMETHING about living in the city, that I just can't quite put my finger on... but whatever it is, I love it.
12. It is OUR house. As I mentioned in my previous post, we have done a ton of work here. This home really is ours - the decorating, the floors, the paint, the layout, and especially the upstairs. It looks absolutely nothing like it did when we moved in, and that is really gratifying to me.
13. Cozy. Ahh, the dreaded "c" word - when you see it on a real estate listing, you know what that means - SMALL! But, it also means less to clean, we'll never get lost, less risk of junk accumulating, and no need to buy lots of furniture. The first part, less to clean, is key for us. Neither of us love or even slightly like to clean, so it's perfect for us to be able to do a reasonably good job in just a few hours.
Wow, writing this felt really good! I actually am feeling all warm and fuzzy about my house now, and know that searching for a 2nd house that has all of these things would be really tough. Maybe 7 more years here (that's what Ben decided is necessary) won't be so bad after all.
8 comments:
You could probably replace the dining room light fixture just for good measure.
sister.
Your house is great. I am glad you can see all the great things about it. The wood work is amazing.
Okay... this is just my 2 cents...
BUT - I think that some how along the way we have been tricked into thinking that:
1: we need much MUCH more room to live and be a family than any generation before us. Houses are getting bigger and bigger but families are getting smaller and smaller.
2: people are spending more and more on their homes by percentage and saving less and less (and going into more and more debt.)
3: children need big bedrooms, play rooms, family rooms - parents need master suites, office, craft room, media room, formal living room - add to that a guest room, an eat in kitchen, a dining room .... on and on and on.
We have been thinking a lot about this. There is this constant pressure to get a bigger house. Comments are made to us all the time. Now that we have a baby - that our 2 bedroom is way too small.
We have come to the decision - a lot like you guys - we would rather save money, travel, retire someday well. That means staying cozy in our little home and we are okay with that.
Hooray for little houses. I am in love with your porch!
What an awesome post. We are honored to be on the list, You know you are on ours. I also echo Nessa's sentiment, excess is so 2000's. Frugal is the new cool.
I know 28 minutes far exceed's the appropriate length of a video forward, I promise its worth it.
Its actually an episode of the BBC show: How Aspirational TV has ruined your life.
It's essentially one long rant, and everything he says sounds more convincing with the British accent.
Just in case you get bored, don't miss the part about children at the 14:40 mark
What a good exercise! It's so easy to focus on the things you don't like about your home, but knowing you might have to hang there a bit longer - this was a perfect way to bring on the warm fuzzies!
I love your porch and your backyard and the park nearby. Those are killer. And the fact that you love your neighbors... well, that would be the dealbreaker for me. I would make them all move with me when I decided to.
You made me want to live there!
LOVE IT!!! I am also so happy to be on the list....makes me want to make one myself. I also miss the summer/fall months when we are all outside or on the porches...soon enough! See you tonight through the kitchen window!
Yeah, I love this too. You have a great attitude about this Erin.
And yeah, like Nessa said above, I don't know what it is with needing SO MUCH SPACE. Just way more to clean, way more grass to mow, way more driveway to shovel... and those big suburban homes in our price range never have the charm or character of an old city home. :)
We also live in an old "cozy" house, in a real city neighborhood within walking distance of restaurants, a coffee shop, a bakery, our bank, a hair salon, drug store, multiple parks, a walking path, a lake... and my parents, aka... babysitters! I mean seriously, when I get down on the fact that we are pretty much stuck here for the forseeable future, I try to remember all the awesome.
Ok, one idea for you. We have this breezeway that connects our house to our garage that we're in the process of turning into a 4-season porch, so we can bring some of the outdoors inside even in the winter. Maybe, since your porch is one of your favorite places to be in the warmer months, you could convert it into a 4-season? Some new windows, insualtion, flooring, heat, electricty? It sounds overwhelming, but really, it's all doable, definitely a smaller and cheaper project that finishing a basement! Anwyay, just an idea. :)
Love this post, Erin! You know I am a big proponent of less is more, so I'm happy to see all the commanders who also agree!
Jen
I can't read this without making a plug for alleys. One of my favorite things about living in the city is having an alley. No driveway to shovel or maintain or take up any of my yard, it provides drainage so when it rains I don't have a swamp in my back yard, kids can ride bikes on the sidewalk without cars coming out of driveways, I don't have to store garbage in my yard and wheel it to the curb, did I mention no shoveling?
The rest of the stuff about city living I agree with you, but I can't stand idly by and watch alleys get put down without sticking up for them.
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