I Downsized. Do I Regret it?
My wife had a saying. She said it so often I stopped hearing it, the way you stop hearing the AC hum or the dog scratching at the door.
“Craig, we don’t need all this space.”
She wasn’t wrong. Four bedrooms, three bathrooms, 2,300 square feet, three acres in LaBelle. Just the two of us rattling around in there like a couple of pennies in a coffee can. After she passed, the rattling got louder.
So I did what made sense. I called my son.
My son and his wife have three kids, a dog that I’m not going to describe because this is a family publication, and until recently, a mortgage of their own that was eating them alive. The math was simple. They move into the main house, take over the $20,000 left on a home worth more than half a million dollars, and eventually it’s theirs. I move into the guest house on the property — 1,200 square feet, two bedrooms, one bath — and everybody wins.
That was eighteen months ago.
I want to talk about what everybody wins actually looks like.
What I Gave Away When I Downsized That I Thought I Wouldn't Miss
1. The Kitchen
Not just the size of it, though that’s part of it.
When I downsized, I gave away the kitchen where Linda made coffee every morning in a pot that was too big for two people. I gave away the counter where she’d leave her reading glasses and then immediately ask me where she put them. I gave away the window above the sink that faced the back pasture and caught the light at 7am in a way that I took for granted for twenty three years.
My kitchen now has a window that faces the side of my son’s garage.
It’s fine. It’s totally fine.
2. Privacy
Three acres sounds like plenty of space. And it is. But there is a particular kind of privacy that lives inside the understanding that nobody knows what you’re doing right now. Nobody can see your lights. Nobody notices what time your truck leaves the driveway.
That privacy is gone.
Look. There is something deeply, fundamentally American about stepping outside on your own land in the early morning with a cup of coffee and absolutely nothing else while the sun comes up over the pasture. You know what I mean.
But my daughter in law keeps odd hours and her kitchen window faces my porch.
Maybe that’s a good thing. For everyone involved.
But I do miss the sun.
3. The Last Stop Panic
It didn’t hit me right away. The first couple of weeks I was busy — unpacking, figuring out where things went, deciding which things weren’t going anywhere because there was nowhere for them to go.
Then one evening I sat down on the couch. Nothing on TV. Biscuit, my son’s dog, had gone home. The kids were quiet. And the thought just — arrived. Uninvited. Sat right down next to me like it owned the place.
This is probably my last stop.
Starter home. Forever home. Now this.
I’ve bought homes to grow into. I’ve bought homes to raise a family in. This is the home I moved into to — what exactly? I didn’t buy it. I didn’t choose it really. It was just there. Which somehow made the thought land harder.
I sat with it for a while though. Because it’s true and I’ve never been good at arguing with true.
And then I thought about Linda. Her last stop had a window with good morning light and I visited her there every single day until I couldn’t anymore. She never once acted like it was the last stop. She acted like it was just where she was right now.
Maybe that’s the whole thing right there.
Maybe last stops aren’t the worst stops.
Maybe they just require the most intention.
4. The House People Came To
Every February, without fail, my buddy Jeff drives down from Atlanta for a week. We fish. We eat badly. We watch things on TV that neither of us would admit to watching. We don’t talk about our feelings but somehow by Thursday we’ve talked about everything that matters.
This is a twenty year tradition.
Jeff is coming in February.
I have a second bedroom. It is currently functioning as my office, my storage unit, and the place where approximately forty years of decisions I haven’t made yet are living in boxes. Jeff could sleep on my couch. Jeff would probably be fine with that. Jeff is not a complicated man.
But here’s where it gets complicated in my head.
What if Jeff wants to bring his girlfriend? What if I want to have a girlfriend someday? What if my sister wants to visit? What if someone just needs a place to land for a few days the way people used to need a place to land when we were always that place?
Linda and I were that house. The one people came to. Extra bathroom, guest room with an actual door that closed, back porch big enough for everyone, and Linda who could feed twelve people with what looked like nothing in the refrigerator.
I gave all of that away when I downsized.
There are three acres here. My son keeps saying we should get an RV and park it out back. He’s not wrong. That’s actually a pretty good idea and I’m annoyed he thought of it first.
But it’s not the same as having a guest room with Linda’s good towels folded on the bed.
Nothing really is.
5. The God-Given Right to Piddle
I am a man with projects.
Not finished projects. Projects. In various stages of consideration, progress, and optimistic intention. A fishing rod that needs new line. A toolbox that needs reorganizing. A screen door hinge that’s been “about to get fixed” since approximately the Obama administration.
In my house — my real house — these projects lived in areas. Specific areas. My areas. The garage had a system that made sense to exactly one person and that person was me and that was the whole point.
I moved into 1,200 square feet on the same property as my son.
My son, it turns out, also has projects. My daughter in law also has projects. Three children who are apparently being raised in the family tradition also have projects.
There is nowhere to piddle that someone else’s piddle isn’t already piddling.
I want you to understand that I am not being dramatic when I tell you this has been the hardest part. Not the kitchen. Not the sky. Not Jeff sleeping in a hotel in February like a stranger.
This.
A man needs room to not finish things in peace. That’s not laziness. That’s process. That’s how we think. You leave it out because leaving it out means you’re still working on it in your head even when you’re doing something else.
My screen door hinge is still not fixed.
Now it just bothers more people.
One More Thing
Last Tuesday Ella knocked on my door at 4:30 in the afternoon. She’s seven. She had a book. She wanted me to read it to her because, and I quote, “Daddy reads it wrong.”
We sat on my small porch — the one that faces the garage, the one where I can no longer greet the sunrise the way God and the founding fathers intended — and I read her the book twice. The second time she read it to me. She got most of the words right. When she got one wrong she looked at me to see if I was going to correct her and I just kept the same face and she kept going.
When she left she said “see you tomorrow, Grandpa” like it was already decided.
It was already decided.
I have 1,200 square feet and a porch that faces a garage and a screen door that still isn’t fixed and a second bedroom full of boxes and Jeff is going to have to sleep on the couch in February and I cannot step outside in the morning the way a free man should.
I gave away a lot when I downsized.
But Ella knows where I live.
She’s never once had trouble finding me.
And some mornings — not all of them, but some — that window that faces the garage catches the light just right.
Linda would have loved this.
She probably planned it.
Craig is a 63 year old LaBelle, Florida resident figuring it out one day at a time. He writes about the things men his age think about but don’t usually say out loud.
