If you're a bird, I'm a bird

I know this post is going to be lengthy and I have been wanting to write it, but the task seems daunting because I don't want to leave anything out and want to express myself fully. I'm trying to remember when I started feeling moved to try out the minimalism philosophy. I think we were living in our December-May rental. Prior to that rental we were in a 1,315 square foot house next door. Our neighbors moved and we moved into their two-story 2,081 square foot house. We actually made an offer on the house, but the whole process fell through, which ended up being a good thing. So instead of buying the house, we got to try it out and I found (and Joseph probably did too), that it was not the house for us. The house was sooo spread out, which I thought was a good thing at first. A l l  t h a t  r o o m. Our 2 & 4 year shared a room like they had in the previous house. Our 16-year old exchange student had his own room upstairs, who we never saw. Laundry room was upstairs...

We sold our house in Athens, GA July 2014. We've been renting in Beaufort, SC since July 2013. When we moved here we had intentions of buying eventually. Maybe not right away, but eventually a "forever" home. We tried to buy our neighbor's house in December to help them out because they had already been stationed somewhere else. I had just returned to teaching so my salary had increased. The house appraised for less than what they were asking so we could only get a loan for the appraisal amount. They were asking $200,000. The house is over 2,000 square feet, two story, private back yard, no mature trees, large and open. We ended up renting it from the neighbors since we gave our current landlord a notice so we needed a place to live. We are kind of glad we had the opportunity to "try out" the house before we purchased. We have found that we do not care for two-story houses right now. The kids do fine with stairs so that isn't a concern. We joke abo...