Things I will miss:

• The bright open feeling
• The views
• Covered, secure parking
• The right-out-the-door access to everything, including groceries
• The less than 15 minute walk to the Rose Garden for Blazer games
• The patio and high solid wall which minimized toddler interest
• Having a competent maintenance staff on on site

Things I won’t miss:

• The 18 floor elevator ride to the car followed by a three floor drive to street level
• Dacor
• The one butt kitchen
• The shower in the second bath and tub in the master bath
• Having a home office in the master bedroom
• The patio and high solid wall which was noisier (from I-405) than expected and blocked views when sitting on patio furniture

I’m sure as we settle back into our house there will be other items to add to both lists.  For us, one of the biggest challenges was storage.  There never seemed to be enough of it so making sure that there is space for your lifestyle is important.

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.”

1054 SQFT is probably the smallest we would be comfortable in with a toddler and sixty pound dog long term.  It certainly helps that we have a large outdoor space and eleven foot ceilings with glass walls (I have previously written about cubic space in condos versus square footage).  1054 SQFT without views, high ceilings and outdoor space would feel much smaller.  Each foot of ceiling height adds about 10% to the cubic space.  It doesn’t help that I work mostly from here so that eats up some additional space for office related space.  I’m sure that the same square footage would be very large for some others with a similar sized family but we’ve come down more than 75% from what we had (which I have always said was too much space for us).

We do like the lower cost of living.  It’s less expensive to have 1054 SQFT.  I don’t feel that we have sacrifced on much of anything other than size.  Both dwellings are high quality in locations we enjoy. I think it would be easy to defeat the downsizing by wanting too much of what you had previosly. I can see that we would have a hard time with some of our art, not only would it not fit in in style, it woudn’t fit in the space.  Dining room table with ten chairs?  Not happening here.  This is one part of the “practice” downsizing that I am glad we didn’t have to undertake.  There is a lot of stuff when we return home that we won’t have missed.  Some of it is stuff that would never be missed, some of it is just the stuff you have to have to fill the space.

The main things to consider when lokking at a smaller space appear to be making sure that they core things you did and enjoyed before still work in the new place.  I don’t want my parents staying in a hotel when they visit as much of the time they would spend with us and their grandson would be lost.  The sofa I am on would be better suited as a sofa bed to make that work.  I’d like a nook or space that could be “office” rather than a desk at the foot of the bed.  Our ability to cook and entertain works with smaller numbers; no way our holiday/client appriciation party is happening here.  Overall, the sarifice of space has been very doable.

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.

We’re having the same challenge trying to do the safety stuff without inflicting damage. Instead of installing cupboard locks under the sink, we’ve got all the cleaners in an upper cabinet. The compression baby gate works well in the hall (though it required and extension piece). We didn’t feel the compression bar that we hung a curtain was strong enough so we did install one end of a closet bar cup and the put the other end of the bar on the window frame so it can’t be pulled down. We hung the magnetic knife rack on the wall in the kitchen out of his reach. We put some temporary hooks up to hang the blind cords up off the floor. It looks like the fittings on the cords are made to be mounted to the wall but the window frames are metal. The balcony has a tall solid railing. As long as we make sure there is nothing he can move to the railing it looks pretty safe. I think it is preferable to having the clear railings we saw in most of the other buildings we looked at but it certainly doesn’t do the view any favors.

Ultimately it is parenting and keeping an eye on him. The pitter patter of tiny feet is a dead give away to his whereabouts most of the time; an advantage of wood flooring!