Change - #4

Change is not easy. For some it is harder than others.

My husband Charlie isn't a big fan of change. But I like the idea of starting over. I am always trying new approaches to different things that may make my(our) life better or at least more interesting. For this reason, I consider myself more driven. I am always thinking.

I was 24 years old when my first husband, Bob and I purchased our first (and only) home.  Our children were born and raised in this home and it was where Bob suddenly died, a very young man of 34. I remarried and continued to live in this house, starting over again, many times. Thirty seven years later, I feel like I have lived several lives in this home and I have been ready for a change for a very long time now. I am not generally the sentimental type.

After all our children had come and gone, the house was pretty empty. It seemed like we gravitated only to a small portion of the house and the rest of the rooms remained untouched. So I came up with an idea. (always thinking) The way the house was styled, it would be easy to separate the upstairs from the downstairs and make two separate living spaces, each with their own private entrance. And that is what we did.

For six years, we rented the larger main upstairs of the house and created an apartment for ourselves in the basement level. The basement of our raised ranch had large windows around the entire house, making it bright and sunny. It had been divided up and partially finished when I first purchased the home. Over the years, I had finished the remaining space. When we moved downstairs, it became the first step toward downsizing. We created clearly defined uses for the rooms: a large bedroom (almost 20' long) with sitting area, a separate office, and a combined living and eating space, and a nice little bathroom with a shower. We created a "European" kitchen - small refrigerator,  microwave, convection/toaster oven and a small portable cooktop. We also had a laundry area. This type of living is obviously not for everyone, but it worked for us. The rental income gave us an opportunity to save, pay off debt and begin to make improvements to the house. And, it became a possible scenario for us to travel and leave the house in the custody of our tenants, while making the house self supporting through rental income.

However, once the decision had been made that we would be moving with our children (story forthcoming), we gave our tenants about 6 months notice to vacate. And in May, 2016, we began the process of readying the house for sale.