Ok, this post won’t need a lot of words (famous last words from this Chatty Cathy) because the two videos in this post will do a lot of the work for us. You can just click play below to see a final “after tour” of our house, as it looked right before our real estate showings in early March (you can hear more about how those went here in this podcast episode – it was pretty crazy!). And if you have questions about paint colors or where we got something that you saw (furniture items, accessories, blinds, rugs, etc) they’re all sourced right here in this post for you.
Note: You can also view this video here on YouTube.
Just for fun, let’s look back at the before tour of this house! I can hardly remember it like that. Seven years isn’t an overnight makeover by any means, but we’re THRILLED with where we ended up. This house has been so good to us. I’ll always love it like a proud momma.
Note: You can also view this video here on YouTube.
The second new video that we filmed of our current house is a walkthrough that we recorded after we packed the house up and sent the pod off to our new house in Florida. With that house being less than half the size of our current house (we’re downsizing from 3150 square feet to 1400 square feet and going from 14 rooms to 6!), clearly we couldn’t bring everything – so we probably brought about 45% and left about 55% of our stuff.
If you’re asking yourself “how the heck did they choose?!” we actually asked ourselves four specific questions that made it pretty simple! Those are outlined right here for you (you don’t have to listen to the podcast, they’re typed out in the show notes here if you’d rather just read them – just scroll down until you see the four numbered paragraphs).
And as for what we did with the remaining 55% of our stuff, we actually offered the person who bought our house “first dibs” at buying anything we weren’t taking with us. We just typed up an itemized list of what was for sale, priced each item, and she decided to buy it all! (more info on how that process went, how we priced things, and the exact amount of money we made selling everything is here in this podcast). So just click play below to see what remained (note: there are some plants & personal items like our computers & bedding that are obviously coming with us, they’re just going to ride in the car with us when we drive down on moving day).
Note: You can also view this video here on YouTube.
Ok, I know a few questions are going to come up a bunch so let’s get to those first:
- Our stair runner held up awesomely for 6+ years, but during our bathroom reno it got a little worse for wear with us dragging big heavy things up and down. So we replaced it with the same stair treads that we used a the pink house to help Burger keep his grip.
- You noticed there is stuff on the built-ins in the living room, bonus room, and in our son’s room as well as on the kitchen shelves, right? That’s extra stuff I was downsizing so I asked the new buyer if she wanted me to style things and leave items like that behind and she said “ooh yes please.” Don’t do it without asking (that’s weird) but since they were all for it, it was a great way for us to part with some extra smaller items that we won’t have space for at the new place.
- As for why we sent off the pod and are still in Richmond and not in FL unpacking it, it takes the pod 2 weeks to make its way to Florida, so we had to get that packed up & out the door around half a month before we could move. So the plan is to just wait for the house to be livable (there are still some floor repairs and some work to get the bathroom fully operable) but hopefully that should be done around the time the pod arrives, and that’s basically our moving day! Yes, it’s a total moving target. I can’t write a date here because it’s literally changing all the time. Kinda feels like how life in general is going lately. What day is it again?
Just for fun, we took a few photos to compare too. This is the office as it looked right before our house showings in early March:
And here it is now. The desk, curtains, deck chair, and light fixture are staying – but obviously those computers are coming in the car with us (and my beloved fiddle leaf fig if we can fit her!).
A ton of the office came with us, (two of those tall white shelving towers, John’s parson’s desk, the marble plant stand, the two benches, the filing cabinet that you can’t even see in this shot, etc) which makes sense because that was a super functional and highly utilized room for us.
Here’s the living room as another example. This is what it looked like right before our house showings:
And here it is now:
I know! The rug! That beautiful TV table! Our beloved homemade coffee table. I feel you. We love the items that are staying (honestly we love everything in our house, but it couldn’t all come with us!). It really came down to those four questions we asked ourselves while deciding what to downsize. If there wasn’t a use or a good spot for something, it just didn’t make sense to go through the trouble of moving it just to be sad that there wasn’t a place for it in our new home.
We think we want a lower but longer TV cabinet due to the new house’s layout, this rug doesn’t fit a single space in the new house very well at all, and the coffee table was perfect for this room’s layout because it bridged a huge gap between our sofa and armchair (which were super far apart in this living room) but that’s not going to be the same scenario in the new house. Plus it weighs about 754 lbs and is very hard to move. It definitely pays to do the mental work before all that physical moving work! Lots of new house measurements were taken into consideration as well as asking ourselves those four questions religiously, and being completely honest with ourselves about the answers.
Oh and we left both of our wall mounted TVs (we have a second one in the bonus room that we also left, which you see in the video). Since they’re both mounted to the wall with their wires hidden within the wall itself, it was much easier to leave them and we don’t have to worry that they’ll get cracked in the pod. We figure we might want a different sized TV for the new house anyway, so we sold both of them for around the same price that it’ll cost to get a new one for our new house.
Here’s our bedroom as it looked before our showings:
And here it is as it looks now. I know, I know. My beloved secondhand find-of-my-life rug. It’s HUGE, and there isn’t a single space that makes sense for it in the new house (believe me I checked like 143 times) and nothing would be worse than lugging it to Florida and dragging it all around the house while softly sobbing. I’m comforted by the fact that the new owner promised to love it like a child and periodically send me photos so I can pet it through my phone screen. For this rug, in the words of Celine Dion, my heart will go on.
We also decided to sell all of our beds since we know we’ll benefit from more storage-friendly ones at our new house (can’t even slide anything under ours because it’s fully upholstered down there – and the kids both love the idea of a bed with a trundle or drawers under them). Gotta be smart about every inch. Which is a weirdly fun challenge for me and John. We’re really looking forward to all sorts of smart solutions, from strategic store-bought items to built-ins and stuff we can make to maximize function.
Onward to the kids rooms! Here’s how our daughter’s room looked right before our showings (except we changed the curtains out for white ones but forgot to snap a picture):
And here it is now. We talked a lot with the kids about what they wanted to bring, and although I assumed our daughter would want to bring her headboard (even if we changed out the actual bed for something with drawers or a trundle), she surprised us! Really wanted to bring her dresser, but no attachment to the headboard. Wanted lots of the art, but not all of it. And didn’t want the cubby-bookcase storage thing we had against one wall (not pictured in either photo but you see it in the video).
She’s almost 10 so we’re giving her a lot of control of her new space (honestly, based on her cardboard box houses I’m 100% sure she’s a better designer than I am at this point). She’s completely thrilled to get to put the money that was “earned” by selling items in her room towards new pieces for her space. Like VERY into it. I can’t wait to see what she chooses.
Ah the art room, a space that didn’t exist for a while but then got ALL THE USE IN THE WORLD when it came into our lives. This is how it looked before showings:
And this is how it looks now. Yup, it’s all coming with us. We’re definitely going to work this space into the new house because it got so much daily use and was a great “home base” for all things paper and cardboard (more on our placement plans for it here and here). Just like in this house, we’re tucking it upstairs so it’s not the first thing you see when you step into the house (their creations have a way of multiplying – ha!). You can see it in action here in this “Real Life” highlight on Instagram.
So there ya have it. As usual, that was a lot more words that I thought it would be. And I suspect we’ll still get a ton of “wait you’re not bringing XYZ?!” questions, because every IG story we share = so many questions when someone glimpses something that stayed. Long story long, we love everything in our house but we couldn’t bring it all, and we’re excited to have a smaller home and fewer things to maintain and live with – so it meant making some hard choices.
Believe me when I say that I tried to find a spot for my Serena & Lily stools for about a month. Ha! There isn’t going to be an island in the kitchen but I still was like… what about a bar against the wall somewhere? Think they’d survive on the covered porch? Finally faced the music that there was most definitely not a place for them – and there was something oddly freeing about just admitting that to myself. Plus knowing that the things we loved and chose for specific spots in this house get to live out the rest of their days here feels pretty good too.
This entire exercise also makes us appreciate the stuff in the pod even more! Like that is OUR FAVORITE STUFF! It’s packed with items that we think will be the most useful and the most beautiful in our new smaller house by the beach. Oh man, we can’t wait to unpack that pod and be reunited! Also, how many houseplants do you think I can cram into the car with us for the drive down to FL? If I have my way it’ll be ALL OF THEM (#Johnsaidno).
P.S. If you have questions about paint colors or where we got something in our house (furniture items, accessories, blinds, rugs, etc) this post has all of that info for you.
