The Incredible Shrinking House

Michael and I moved into this house 9 1/2 years ago and I'm more certain than ever that it is shrinking. Most houses shrink. A few grow, but most shrink. For example, our Ohio house, where I lived from age 2 to age 10, is significantly smaller than it was back then. I sometimes fear that if I drive by it one more time it will be nothing more than a dollhouse. It had three bedrooms, a bathroom, a hall closet, a living room, a dining room, a kitchen, and a basement. I'd guess by now it has one bedroom, a living room, and a kitchen. Crazy, I tell ya.

And this house is doing the same thing. See when we moved into this house it had a huge kitchen. That was a selling feature for me. I loved the kitchen. (Not the paint, though. The previous owners had it sponge-painted pink and white...all the way up to the vaulted ceiling.) I know the kitchen is shrinking because it's only half the size it was before. The other half morphed into a laundry-shoe collecting-sewing-office-deep freezer room. And there are no where near as many cabinets as there were when we moved in. There just can't be! I used to have room to store all of my kitchen supplies. Used to.

The upstairs is even worse than the kitchen. When we moved here almost a decade ago, the house boasted a master bedroom, an upstairs office, and a guest room! I can hardly remember. The office and guest room combined when Brenna was born and went away forever when Daniel was born. I'm sure we planned for that when we bought the house, but the rooms looked a lot bigger back then. I didn't foresee a problem with bunking kids. It'll be a literal bunking for sure. There's not enough space for more than one bed in each room.

To combat this problem early on, we are planning to turn part of our master closet into a mini-nursery. At least until the baby is sleeping through the night. I will hang a curtain at the window and probably move my hang-up clothes to Brenna or Daniel's closet. And just like that, there goes our master walk-in closet. I've been purging in a major way. Not just our closet, but all over the house. As a house shrinks, you have to get more and more creative in buying back space.

I hear there comes a time when houses begin to grow. Folks come in to Rocketts all the time with the intention of 'downsizing'. They tell me their house is just too big. Kids have launched and they don't need all those rooms. I don't think this house can grow. I think it's a perpetual shrinker! So we'll continue to supply Goodwill with the things we aren't using and don't really need. Somewhere in the next 7 months, we have some space to find!