Keeping Up With The Burnetts: We have a winner!

We knew we were a little crazy to arrive at 5am on a Saturaday after 36+ hours of travel with 2 young children and hope to be moved into an apartment by the following Friday morning. An unfruitful and exhausting search over the weekend with a cranky toddler followed by an intensive whirlwind apartment search on Monday (16 viewings - from 9 to 6pm!) yielded four contenders. Forced to take another day to decide (and yet still working against a fixed moving day on Friday), we revisited our top options and narrowed the field yesterday; finally deciding on a place last night!

I am thrilled with our choice and so incredibly happy to have a place to call my own again in the world, but remain a bit anxious over a few obstacles remaining. Unfortunately for us, we learned on arrival that the listed square footage for apartments includes a slice of lobby, a sliver of hallway, and a dash of elevator. So the 2,500 square feet we were confident would accommodate our family during our online search (and budgeting) is actually more like 1,700 (if that) in real life. (And keep in mind we need a separate, designated home office for Devin!) Which means we have once again found ourselves downsizing (while our family is expanding).

I understand that space is at a premium here, and I don't think it's a bad thing to learn to live "lean". I'm just very aware that we are going to be experiencing some space challenges and have some tough decisions to make for what makes the cut and finds a place in our home, what we carted across the world to give away, and what will be relegated into storage (which will be an absolute must at this point).

Amidst the fear of confronting our stuff (which let's face it, represents our collective tendency to gravitate towards materialism), lies a small measure of excitement. It is freeing to purge, and as I said, it might not be such a terrible thing to learn to live with less.

And with that, I present to you, our new home: