One Month After Downsizing

Today will be exactly one month since we packed up our 2 bedroom/2 bathroom loft and moved to a 1 bedroom/1 bathroom apartment! It was an interesting journey to start - having to sell or regrettably toss old items but now after a month, we've gotten into the groove of the space and personally I favor it!

Doing a significant downsize makes you consider what you need and don't need any time you head to the store as well as keeping your storage space more neat than you would if you had an extra room. Back at our old loft, we would get into the habit of just tossing our extra items that we didn't want out in the open into our second bedroom. Now that we have limited amount of storage, we try to keep any and all storage places neat and orderly so we can easily see where things are in case we need to grab them. We also are lucky enough to have bike storage at our complex, so no need for cluttery bikes taking up any space in our unit!

So after living in a smaller space for a month, what are my pros and cons?

Pros:

• Smaller space = cleaning is a BREEZE!

• No need to purchase new furniture (except for patio chairs.. which I still need to find either thrifting or Facebook Marketplace)

• As we get into hot Georgia time, it takes less electricity to cool this place down

• This apartment is newer and 1000x nicer than our old, dusty loft

• We now have an outdoor space when we didn't before

Cons:

• Limited storage

• It can get a little crazy with three cats... especially with two that can't stand each other

• Less space for recycling... which means, it stacks up pretty quickly and our complex doesn't offer recycling yet

• Can get a little messy fast, especially our living room/kitchen open layout

All in all, we are really happy with the decision we made! It's just enough space for us, if not even a little smaller than what we needed. It forced us to be resourceful in our storage options, clean way more often than we were doing initially and to get rid of some items we've been holding on to for really, no reason.

If you're looking to downsize or have already - what are/were you hoping to gain out of it?