Archive for the ‘Downsizing Real Estate’ Category:

I closed the door at our apartment for the last time at 6:20 AM this morning.  CBS Films has left town and we are back in our house.  The experience of living in the Pearl District in just over 1000 square feet with a wife, dog, toddler and home office proved very doable but at the same time we are glad to be home. (more…)

I spent the night on the sofa.  I didn’t do anything.  I’m not in trouble.  Regular readers know that we’ve moved out of our nearly 5000 SQFT historic home for a 1054 SQFT apartment.  It’s a six month experiment that came about in an unsolicited manner; our house is a corporate rental, fully furnished through June. We’ve been here for about a month now.

My parents are visiting for three nights so now its four adults, one toddler and one dog in less square footage than one of the floors of our house.  One of the things that I find hard to believe is that we left a fully furnished house behind.  We’ve brought with us and purchased a minimal amount of furniture and the condo does not feel under-appointed.  We would need very little of the furniture that remains in our house if we were doing this “forever.” (more…)

There is a comedian’s sketch about baby proofing the stove: turn it on high and wait for him to touch it. Now baby-proof: he’s not going to touch it again. Maybe not the best method but effective and effective is probably all that matters in the long run. Our two-year-old survived living in our 1902 home relatively unscathed. Figuring out how to do things to protect him without inflicting damage on the house was a challenge. The baby gate at the top of the stairs is zip-tied to the posts rather than screwed in. The latches for the cupboards required a little modification since they are not designed to work with inset cabinetry.

It’s fair to say that a 2008 apartment that was built as condos didn’t have two-year-olds in mind when they were designed either. We’ve seen a lot of strollers around on the streets but none in our building. Dogs seem to out-number children by a factor of 10. All the door knobs in our house are the standard round type so we installed the Safety 1^st covers on the appropriate ones. I bought the leaver covers for the knobs for here but the commercial knobs won’t take the covers. They don’t recommend them for external doors but that would have been preferable to having run down the hall. Thankfully he can’t reach the elevator button, yet, if he was to escape. (more…)