Unmissed Rooms: The Relief of Downsizing

In a world often fixated on bigger, grander homes, our journey has taken a decidedly different path. It was only recently, while revisiting old photos of our former Virginia residence, that the stark reality of how much “extra house” we once occupied truly hit me. Rooms lay under-utilized, almost forgotten, a testament to a lifestyle we’ve since intentionally shed. It’s been 2.5 years since we embraced a significant downsize, and looking back now offers a fascinating perspective on what truly matters in a home.

Our previous house, a spacious 3,150-square-foot traditional colonial in Virginia, was a home we genuinely loved. Yet, despite its charm and ample space, a summer spent in our much smaller pink beach house served as a profound revelation. That experience unequivocally clarified our desire for a more modest footprint, pushing us towards the decision to embrace intentional living and downsize. The move to our current 1,400-square-foot home in Florida felt like a huge relief, a conscious shift towards a life with less emphasis on square footage and more on lifestyle. For those who appreciate the numbers, that’s less than half the space!

The transition wasn’t just about reducing overall size; it meant rethinking fundamental aspects of home design. Some of our current rooms are simply more compact than their Virginia predecessors, but we also now live without entire dedicated spaces – shrinking from three bathrooms to one, and completely eliminating a garage, a home office, and a formal dining room. Over the past 2.5 years, including a global pandemic that brought a full year of at-home learning into our cozier abode, our smaller home has been rigorously tested. Having successfully navigated these changes, it’s intriguing to reflect on which spaces we genuinely miss, and perhaps more surprisingly, which ones we’ve effortlessly adapted to live without.

From Fourteen Rooms to Six: Embracing the Smaller Footprint

Our current Florida home operates on a principle of efficiency and multi-functionality, comprising just six primary indoor spaces. Downstairs, a dynamic open-concept area seamlessly integrates the kitchen with a comfortable sitting zone. The upper level features three bedrooms, a single bathroom, and a versatile family room that deftly serves as a TV lounge, a workspace, a crafting hub, and a children’s play area. These are the core elements that define our streamlined living experience:

For a deeper dive into each of these functional spaces and to view more photographs, please explore the links below:

1. The Kitchen/Sitting Area
2. Our Bedroom
3. The Bathroom
4. Our Daughter’s Bedroom
5. Our Son’s Bedroom
6. The Upstairs Family Room

Beyond these six essential indoor rooms, we are fortunate to benefit from an abundance of outdoor living areas that significantly expand our usable space. These include a spacious upstairs deck, two inviting porches, a refreshing pool area, and various other outdoor zones. Thanks to Florida’s nearly year-round pleasant weather, these spaces are in constant use, providing invaluable areas to relax and spread out. When it comes to temperature-controlled indoor environments, however, our six dedicated rooms are the entirety of our footprint. We do have a convenient laundry closet discreetly integrated into the kitchen and a small hallway connecting some rooms, but by any conventional measure, these are not considered standalone rooms.

It’s worth noting that a truly grand hallway or entry foyer, substantial enough to accommodate furniture and featuring its own amenities, can indeed qualify as a room. For instance, the foyer in our previous Virginia home was a generous 12′ x 12′ space, complete with an entry table, a chandelier, and two built-in closets. Real estate listings accurately classified it as a room and provided its measurements accordingly.

To fully appreciate the scope of our downsizing, let’s reflect on the fourteen distinct rooms that comprised our former Virginia residence:

1. The Kitchen
2. The Family Room
3. The Dining Room
4. The Office
5. The Downstairs Bathroom
6. The Foyer
7. Our Bedroom
8. Our Bathroom / Walk-In Closet
9. Our Daughter’s Room
10. Our Son’s Room
11. The Hall Bathroom
12. The Art / Homework Room
13. The Laundry Room
14. The Bonus Room

This represents a substantial difference of eight distinct rooms, not even accounting for the unconditioned spaces. Our Richmond home also boasted a cavernous walk-up attic, stretching the entire length of the first floor, a two-car garage, and a generous outdoor shed. These three additional storage areas are notably absent from our current Florida home. The sheer volume of belongings these spaces once held meant that beyond simply reducing our room count, we achieved a significant victory in decluttering and minimizing our storage needs – a feat we are genuinely proud of. The attic and garage, in particular, were notorious for accumulating “crap” and constantly demanded our attention for clean-outs.

Embracing Less: The Rooms We Absolutely Don’t Miss

Before diving into specifics, a quick disclaimer: everyone’s needs and desires for a home are uniquely personal. We often share our “downsizing journey” (please imagine this delivered with the dramatic flair of a reality TV show contestant discussing their “relationship journey”), and while we’re transparent about our experiences, we readily acknowledge that individual outcomes and opinions will vary. The purpose of this reflection is to offer insights into our decision-making process, which might be helpful if you’re house hunting, renovating, or simply re-evaluating the purpose of a spare room. If downsizing is on your horizon, this perspective might even offer encouragement that you can thrive without a [insert room you’ve always had here].

We’re certainly not suggesting you demolish a perfectly functional room or feel guilty for having one. Many of these spaces are indispensable for certain households, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a room simply being “nice to have.” After all, we happily lived in our larger Virginia home for seven years before making this transformative move! Perhaps your spare bedroom enhances resale value, that extra powder room was a joy to decorate, or your basement gym perfectly stores fifty-two boxes of holiday decorations. We vividly recall filling our attic to the absolute brim. We understand the allure and the practicality of having extra space.

However, when we reached the point of genuine excitement and immense relief about downsizing, we understood it would involve certain sacrifices and compromises compared to our previous home. What this reflective analysis truly unveiled, to our surprise, is how few of these changes have felt like genuine sacrifices in the long run.

The Formal Foyer: A Wasted Grand Entrance?

Long-time followers of our home adventures might find this surprising, as we frequently lamented the absence of a foyer in our first two smaller homes. Both were modest brick ranches where the front door opened directly into the living room. Therefore, acquiring a proper entryway in our last house felt like a monumental achievement – we had finally “made it,” fancy people with a dedicated foyer!

Yet, in retrospect, that grand foyer felt like a significant allocation of wasted square footage. The simple truth was, we almost never used the front door, consistently entering through the garage. Consequently, the foyer became little more than an elaborate pass-through space on our way to other rooms. Our current home has reverted to the “door swings directly into the living area” scenario, and honestly, it hasn’t bothered us in the slightest. It’s a classic case of yearning for something, finally achieving it, and then realizing it’s pleasant but not an indispensable deal-breaker if it disappears again.

Admittedly, it took some creative thinking to devise a furniture layout that effectively accommodated the front door in our smaller space, but we are genuinely pleased with the outcome. We’ve even managed to integrate excellent functional storage for coats and backpacks directly upon entry, thanks to the cleverly designed adjacent laundry closet. (While the kids’ backpacks aren’t visible in this photo as they were at school, they typically hang on the lower hooks of the laundry closet door, keeping clutter out of sight.)

Ultimately, while we recognize the aesthetic and functional value of a foyer in certain homes – even just for the “fancy factor” of a dramatic first impression – our personal experience has taught us to prioritize a highly functional entryway with integrated storage. If presented with a choice between a grand, open foyer and a basic front door with ample space for a small mudroom closet or a dedicated backpack drop-zone, we would unequivocally choose the latter. In our current home, we opted for a super-hardworking laundry closet and a spacious, open feel in the living area, rather than carving out a formal, often underutilized, foyer.

The Dedicated Laundry Room: Convenience Over Seclusion

This revelation might also come as a surprise, given the considerable effort we invested in creating a dedicated laundry room from scratch in our last house. We literally stole space from our unfinished attic to build it, sparing no expense. We even went so far as to include a lavish marble backsplash and under-cabinet lighting, transforming it into the most tricked-out laundry space we had ever owned.

In retrospect, it was undeniably more laundry space than our family genuinely required. Our initial vision involved joyfully throwing haphazard piles of dirty laundry onto the floor, shutting the door, and maintaining it as our little secret. We imagined finding peace and quiet while folding or ironing clothes in this secluded haven.

However, reality rarely aligned with these romanticized notions. Clothes never made a “pit stop” in this room, beyond their time in the washer or dryer; they transitioned directly from hampers to our bedroom for folding. Perhaps with a larger family, more demanding sports schedules, or more extensive wardrobes (knowing Sherry’s preference for a minimal closet), we might have found a true need for this spacious, secluded laundry zone at the end of a long upstairs hallway. But for our family, the very remoteness of the laundry room ironically became an issue. We constantly forgot about running loads because it was so far removed from the bustling areas of our home. In contrast, our previous two homes had laundry facilities much closer to the kitchen, a proximity that rarely led to forgotten cycles.

Our current laundry setup, a discreet closet within the kitchen/downstairs living area, has proven ideal for our habits. Its central location makes it incredibly convenient to everyone’s bedrooms, drastically reducing forgotten loads. Despite its compact nature, it’s still sufficiently roomy to feature a counter for pre-treating stains, a basket for organizing items destined for the next wash, and enough floor space to stand comfortably without feeling obstructed. Being behind closed doors, it doesn’t require constant tidiness and remarkably dampens the laundry noise.

It’s amusing to realize that in our first two homes, we only ever had laundry closets or nooks with stackable units – never a grand, dedicated room with cabinetry and tile. Yet, once again, it appears to be a case of, “it was nice to have, but we’re perfectly fine without it.” Downsizing inherently involves prioritizing; a smaller home simply cannot encompass every conceivable amenity, otherwise, it wouldn’t be small at all.

The Traditional Dining Room: Redefining Family Meals

For many contemporary families, the decline in favor of “formal” dining rooms means our experience here is likely no surprise. We frequently discussed how infrequently we utilized this room in our previous house. Family dinners almost invariably happened at our kitchen island, rendering the dining room largely a temporary repository for packages and various “to-be-dealt-with” boxes, only tidied when guests were expected.

In our current home, we have embraced a singular indoor dining solution: the table in our kitchen. This flexible setup can comfortably seat up to eight people when extended, a configuration we’ve used numerous times. As a family, we’ve discovered a strong preference for eating around a table, facing each other, a significant improvement over lining up on high stools at our old kitchen island. This arrangement fosters much more engaging conversation and connection during meals.

Naturally, one obvious trade-off is that this setup is far from a “formal” dining experience, which might not suffice for those who relish hosting elaborate dinner parties. However, we’ve never been inclined towards formal entertaining, preferring casual game nights with chips and salsa, or relaxed pizza or BBQ burger gatherings. Consequently, letting go of a dedicated dining room was not a concern for us. These days, when we host, we often gravitate towards our outdoor spaces, frequently dining by the pool where a generously sized table with an umbrella also accommodates eight guests.

The “Bonus” Room: A Concept Reimagined

As its name suggests, the bonus room in our last house truly represented “extra” space, ingeniously created by finishing the attic directly above our garage. Post-kitchen, it was the largest room in the house, functioning as a multi-purpose zone for movies, TV, play, and crafting. It’s rather amusing, then, that such a versatile space falls into the “don’t miss” category. However, there’s a clear and compelling reason for this, which we’ll explore shortly.

Converting this unfinished area on our second floor into conditioned, usable square footage felt like a logical decision. The space already had HVAC infrastructure, primarily requiring drywall to become a functional room. Plus, we still retained a massive unfinished walk-up attic on the third floor for all our storage needs. The appeal of a bonus room was strong; we envisioned a secondary living area specifically designed with the kids in mind – a fun zone to corral children during gatherings, a space where messes could accumulate upstairs without impacting the downstairs living areas, and a cozy spot for family movie nights.

Funnily enough, the very reasons we cherished that old bonus room are precisely why we adore our upstairs family room in this smaller house! It functions as an upstairs secondary living space, purposefully designed for our children. It allows them to leave messes without stress, provides a dedicated hangout spot for them and their friends while adults socialize downstairs, and remains our go-to for family movie nights. While we consider our smaller downstairs sitting area and kitchen as our primary living space due to the sheer amount of time spent eating, cooking, and gathering there, the upstairs family room is a very close second. In a home with just six rooms, every space is utilized extensively.

A crucial layout principle for smaller homes is having two generously sized living spaces that are not directly adjacent. This design choice is what truly makes our house “live large.” We frequently have a multitude of children upstairs, engrossed in their activities, while adults relax and converse downstairs in the kitchen/sitting area. Because these spaces are on entirely different floors, the adults aren’t privy to every kid conversation, and we’re spared the constant soundtrack of their movies or games. It’s an arrangement that offers fantastic separation and functionality.

Mirroring our former bonus room, our current upstairs family room features a television, an art desk, and ample open floor space for games and creative projects. While our children are older now (we added the bonus room six years ago), so we no longer contend with blocks and stuffed animals blanketing the floor, this room still witnesses its fair share of “crafting explosions” or board game marathons, which invariably spread across the floor. This is another reason we appreciate its upstairs location, keeping potential messes out of direct sight, just like its predecessor.

Therefore, the fundamental reason we don’t miss the “bonus room” as a distinct entity is that its core functionality has been seamlessly integrated into our current home, simply under a different name. In fact, our new upstairs family room works even harder, as it also cleverly incorporates a dedicated office space within its footprint. Which brings us to…

Adapting to Change: The Office – A Space We Missed, Then Mastered

As a couple who both work from home, a significant concern when purchasing this smaller house was the absence of a dedicated home office. In our previous Virginia home, we had transformed the formal living room into a spacious, shared workspace. The prospect of downsizing to a home without a specific room allocated for an office represented a monumental shift, and we knew it would be a substantial adjustment.

The challenge felt particularly acute immediately after our move, exacerbated by the unforeseen demands of virtual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. For an entire year, all four of us consumed nearly every meal at home, and conducted work and school activities five days a week from within these walls. Such circumstances truly put any home to the ultimate test. While I’m happy to report that we made it work, it was certainly not the most productive period of our lives – a sentiment I’m sure many can echo. This image captures our initial, somewhat makeshift, setup right after moving in; it was, to put it mildly, less than ideal.

The ironic thing is that this crowded situation wasn’t entirely dissimilar to our previous home office, where two tiny chairs served as the kids’ desk, situated just four feet away from Sherry’s floating desk. However, the critical difference was the constant presence of our children, attempting to complete their schooling alongside us trying to work. Yes, many of you know precisely what that dynamic feels like.

Thankfully, this arrangement was short-lived. Many days saw me taking work calls in the bedroom while the kids attended school upstairs, or one or both children retreating to their own rooms for more focused study. Sherry often worked at the kitchen table or secured herself in our bedroom for variously timed Zoom meetings or conference calls. Things drastically improved as the room evolved and the children returned to in-person schooling. The dedicated desk space we eventually carved out in the upstairs family room is, hands down, my favorite “home office” I’ve ever worked from – I’m typing this from there right now, enjoying the entire room to myself! You simply can’t beat the abundance of natural light and the expansive view from that large window.

Furthermore, I’ve transitioned back to using a laptop, granting me the flexibility to work outdoors on the upstairs deck (which I do frequently) or even on the kitchen porch, as depicted below. Meanwhile, Sherry typically sets up her laptop at the kitchen table downstairs or even enjoys working by the pool. Over these 2.5 years, we have definitively optimized our work-from-home strategy, embracing a wonderfully flexible setup. While it can occasionally be inconvenient not to have a completely dedicated, quiet workspace (especially during summer when the kids are home), having never had a door on our old office means we are well-accustomed to interruptions from children or visitors. And just as we did in our previous home, if we require an absolutely silent environment, we simply retreat to our bedroom with the laptop and close the door. We even have a small table by the fireplace there, making for a perfectly comfortable alternative workspace.

Conquering Clutter: Why We Don’t Miss the Garage

Sherry and I actually debated where to place the garage on this list. Occasionally, I find myself thinking fondly of a garage, purely for its convenience, but ultimately, both of us voted: “don’t miss.” Sherry harbors an almost visceral disdain for our last garage and is immensely relieved to no longer have one, primarily due to the endless hours we spent cleaning it out and constantly battling its tendency to fill with clutter. Her vote was hardly a surprise. My feelings, however, were a bit more nuanced and layered.

Generally, we consider ourselves to be very tidy and organized individuals. Yet, for some inexplicable reason, garages, sheds, attics, and similar spaces have always been our Kryptonite – our equivalent of Monica Geller’s infamous closet. Every single time we dedicated days to cleaning and organizing these areas, making solemn promises that we would never let them devolve into such chaos again, they inevitably did. Therefore, the profound reason we don’t miss having a garage is the immense gratitude we feel for being liberated from that endlessly frustrating cycle of broken promises and the prospect of spending yet another weekend cleaning the darn thing.

Not having a garage or any similar expansive storage space has, in fact, compelled us to adopt significantly better habits. We now deal with boxes and items designated for donation immediately, transporting them directly to the car. We’ve also become far more discerning about collecting secondhand furniture; Sherry still appreciates a curbside find, but only if we have an immediate need and a designated spot for it. Crucially, the absence of a garage has spared us from dedicating entire weekends to major clean-outs and, perhaps even more importantly, from the persistent shame we constantly felt about the state of our garage. It was an everyday point of friction that we never truly resolved. Now, we’ve effectively resolved it by simply not having one.

The sole, very occasional reason I look back fondly on a garage is the convenience of having a covered, enclosed space for items like bikes and our car. Here, my primary desire would be for sheltered bike storage. Our car is perfectly fine parked outdoors, but we use bikes far more frequently here than we did in Virginia, and dealing with a wet seat is less than ideal. (Curiously, almost everyone here stores their bikes outdoors, lined up.) It would be simple enough to construct a small, covered alcove for our bikes in the yard, perhaps with a tin roof on posts. Even easier, I recently discovered these bike seat covers, which have completely solved the wet seat issue. So, I concede, Sherry is 100% correct: we simply cannot be trusted not to fill a garage with clutter. Not having one has unlocked countless weekends spent at the beach and our pool that would otherwise have been consumed by garage cleaning. In the long run, it is unequivocally a win for us.

Lest you think we are fully cured of our cluttering tendencies, we do possess a small shed alongside our house, used for tools, yard equipment, and various miscellaneous items. It’s roughly the size of a portable toilet, meaning we can’t truly stuff it with tons of things. However, I am only showing you the exterior because – true to form! – the interior is currently a complete mess.

The Unexpected Longing: Our Master Bathroom – A Beautiful, Brief Memory

This particular point might come as a surprise, given that we’ve indefinitely paused our plans to add a second bathroom to our current Florida home. We genuinely don’t feel a pressing need for an additional bathroom; embarking on an expensive renovation when the existing setup has functioned perfectly well for years simply doesn’t feel like the wisest allocation of money or time. Therefore, while we don’t actively miss having an ensuite bathroom in principle, what we sometimes miss is that specific, beautifully appointed bathroom from our last house.

Our longing stems primarily from the fact that we had so little time to truly savor the finished product before we moved. We had gleefully completed the bathroom renovation, only to enjoy its luxurious features for a mere three months before our new Florida zip code beckoned.

While the timing was certainly not ideal, it was a minor casualty in pursuit of a far more rewarding lifestyle change: downsizing to a warmer, more walkable home closer to the beach. Looking back at those pristine photos, our primary regret is simply not having renovated that bathroom much sooner. We lived in that house for seven years, with nearly all of that time spent enduring the unrenovated bathroom, which you can vividly recall in the “before” photos here.

The Art of the Trade-Off: Living with Intention

Missing that grand, marble-clad bathroom of yesteryear serves as a poignant reminder of the intentional trade-offs we made when downsizing. Yes, we no longer possess a big, fancy master bathroom. Instead, we have cultivated this beautiful, private outdoor space, offering the joy of an open-air shower bathed in sunlight for much of the year (alongside our functional indoor shower, of course). It’s a true story: we collectively shower outside approximately 90% of the year, cherishing this spot with the sun streaming through lush plants – it’s an unparalleled experience.

In essence, the entire philosophy of downsizing boils down to making deliberate trade-offs. We live just a few blocks from the beach, a mere three-minute walk away, but we all share a single bathroom. We don’t have a garage, yet we enjoy a spacious second-floor deck nestled among the treetops. Our kitchen is roughly one-third the size of our last one, but we have a grocery store, diverse restaurants, and charming ice cream shops all within easy walking distance. While our internet connectivity isn’t always dependable – at times, it’s frustratingly slow – we relish year-round access to a swimming pool and a cozy fire pit perfect for s’mores. We occupy significantly less square footage than before, but in return, our home is remarkably easier to clean and substantially more affordable to heat and cool. To learn more about the complete downsizing process, which was not without its challenges, and to delve deeper into this concept of intentional trade-offs, you can visit our about page.

For additional information and insights into our downsizing experience over the past 2.5 years, these posts are rich with practical advice and reflections:

• How we organized our much smaller kitchen for maximum efficiency.
• A comprehensive look at what furniture & home items we still own 2.5 years after downsizing.
• Discover seven smart storage pieces that are indispensable in our daily lives.
• The realities of downsizing: a full report after our first six months.
• A podcast episode detailing exactly how we approached downsizing our belongings.
• A post explaining why we decided to downsize and relocate to a smaller beachside home.
• A podcast recounting our transformative summer of 2019 spent living in our smaller pink beach house.
• A 2018 podcast interview with Shavonda on the true experience of downsizing.
• An earlier podcast interview with Dana Miller about downsizing, a concept that had been brewing in our minds for years.

For any questions regarding wall colors or the specific origins of items featured in the photographs within this article, this post provides all the source information for our current Florida home, while this post details sources from our previous Virginia residence.