So we’ve been house hunting a bit lately. And it’s got me thinking about EVERYTHING. Oh and I should clarify, by house I mean 2 bedroom apartment hunting. And by hunting I mean casually looking and peeking in open houses to get an idea of what’s out there. After tossing around a bunch of ideas we are re-committed to staying in Vancouver and ideally in our neighbourhood (Mount Pleasant) but willing to go further east or west and further south. I love hearing about other people’s needs/wants when it comes to their home so I thought it would be fun to share ours here with the disclaimer that these are still all ideas and we may change our mind. We also may stay in this apartment for a few more years but thought our thought process for why and why not to move might be interesting to share. I know for me, when others breakdown why they love or don’t love their home and what they are missing, it can help highlight things I love or don’t love about my home or ways I might be taking things for granted.

I should also clarify that we are very comfortable in our place at the moment. We are at this sweet spot where the kids are sharing the bedroom and getting along (for the most part). But we are looking towards the next couple of years where it might start getting tight and privacy becomes more crucial.

Our Next Small Space?

I want to share our logic or philosophy for our next place as it may be a bit unexpected or strange to some. We aren’t looking for our forever home, we are looking for the next 5 years or so. We see each home as a stepping stone to meet our minimum needs at that time. I feel that conventional wisdom would say to find your forever home as soon as you become pregnant with your first baby. For us and the the expensive city we choose to live in… finding and owning our forever home isn’t a realistic option for us. Instead we are prioritizing other values over the traditional freestanding home with a backyard. We have already been able to stay in a one bedroom for much longer than any of us expected which helped us pay off more of our mortgage, travel often and find this amazing small space community ;). So for our next move we are looking for a 2 bedroom that checks off a few more boxes than our current place does. We hope to find a 2 bedroom so that eventually we could give each kid their own bedroom and we could still have our wall bed in the living room. We are also hoping for a little more room separation than 600 square feet currently offers. There’s so much we love about our current apartment but we think there will come a time when it doesn’t fulfill our growing family’s needs.

Here are the top loves of our current apartment:

High Ceilings
Lots of Natural Light
Open Floorplan
Ground Level Access
Small Green Space and Patio
Entry Way
Walkable Neighbourhood

What we don’t love:

Busy Street Corner
One Bedroom
Kitchen in the middle of the living space

Needs for our next place:

2nd bedroom
Lots of Natural Light
Wall space for wall bed
Quiet Street
Walkable City Neighbourhood

Wants for our next place:

High Ceilings
Outdoor Green Space
2nd bathroom/powder room
Close to parks

After sharing all this here we may instead decide to stay for 5 more years! Or we might move in a couple months. Regardless it all has me thinking about my love of small spaces and how much of my identity as a person and a mother is wrapped up in it but I think that is for another post, on another day. Thanks for letting me share! Would love to hear what you are looking for in your next place!