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Considering giving up 2 acres to move to suburbs— advice needed
I feel so torn about a decision that my husband and I have been considering lately. I know a lot of people may not be able to relate, but any advice/thoughts/insights would be appreciated. We are considering leaving our house on 2 acres (about 50-60 minutes from the major city in our area) closer to the suburbs. We moved out here about 4.5 years ago right before we had our first child. I am now currently pregnant with baby #3 while taking care of our 2 toddlers. Initially the dream was to homestead. We thought of this property as a stepping stone to bigger land someday eventually (but realistically, we wouldn’t be able to buy a bigger property for probably another at least 10 years). We have chickens, a garden, and hopefully plan to get meat rabbits eventually, but that’s really the max we could probably handle for a long time in the homesteading realm. There are so many reasons why we are considering this, but I am so torn and kind of heartbroken. First of all, we have no help from family. So it’s just my husband (who works full time from home) and I (who stays home) trying to keep up with our yard and take care of our house and kids. It feels endless. We can never even remotely catch up with anything that needs to be done on our property and inside our home. I think this adds so much weight to me particularly, but also my husband. We made our garden too big when we first moved here, but even with making it half the size this year, we just cannot stay on top of it. The weeds get so out of control because we do not have the time to take care of it. And then when we do grow things, we have no time to preserve it (except occasionally fermenting) so it just feels like a failure. Chickens have been good so far, but some days it feels like we barely have time for that. Our regular yard maintenance has not been good. We can stay on top of mowing the lawn, but we have insanely large weeds where normal landscaping should be. It just looks so bad, but again, where are we supposed to find the time to stay on top of this stuff? Our yard looks junky because we don’t have the time to take care of it beyond keeping it mowed. Our house is cluttered and I have no time to declutter. We can’t take on meat rabbits until we have a handle on these other aspects, so if we stay here, it could be several years before we can really get to it. Another issue is, we are Orthodox Christians, and there are no churches in our area, they are all in the city/suburb areas. Going to another denomination of church is not an option. Our drive to church is 50 minutes. Because of this we cannot make other church services during the week at all, only the Divine Liturgy on Sundays and it’s important to us that we be able to make more services than we do, but we just can’t with our commute. Since our church is so far away, it means most of our friends are also far away, living in the suburbs. We have been unable to nurture these friendships for ourselves and our kids so far. It’s too much to be driving there often in order to be close with them, so a lot of the time, I feel secluded and isolated. My oldest toddler is extremely social, the most friendly kid I’ve ever met, and I know he will want to have close friendships as he gets older, but living out here would make this very hard. We are planning to homeschool so that adds another layer of seclusion that may become an issue as they grow up so far from our community. Living out here, we have great neighbors. They’re all retired couples, and extremely nice, but it’s not the same as having families with young kids like us. So out here we have no community. Even if we did have one out here, it’s very important for us to be close to our church community specifically, so it also just wouldn’t be the same. Another aspect is my grandma is declining slowly in health and I am very close to her. She lives in the suburbs, so if things started to get worse for her, I wouldn’t be able to see her regular with how far the commute is. That would be so hard for me.
Now, we love our home and our yard, and just today I was sobbing while outside with the kids just thinking about not living here anymore and how much I would miss the beauty around us, the space, all of the work we put into planting our fruit trees. If we did move, we would only move to somewhere in the suburbs where we could have a garden (much smaller this time), chickens, and meat rabbits (although I don’t know how common it is to find a home like this in the suburbs). It would be much less yard to manage so it wouldn’t get as junky/weedy if we downscale to what we can actually handle. On the other hand, we love that we have no rules where we currently live and I do not want someone telling me I can’t have chickens or meat rabbits. There is also the reality that if we move, we would have to get used to less privacy (although right now, we can still see all of our neighbors fairly closely, we just aren’t right on top of them like you are in the suburbs/city). I also worry about safety and if things like riots would happen in the political climate we face. Although I do not want to base my decision on fear of something that might not happen. I also worry about if the economy got much worse and we had to produce more of our food (although I truly do not know how that would be possible with what we have on our plate), and we wouldn’t have the space to do so if we move. But like I said, even if we had to produce more food, I don’t know much we realistically could ever produce for ourselves given our time restraints. I really don’t understand how families with kids are able to homestead and do so much (or at least it seems to be).
I just worry that we will regret leaving after a year or something and wish we never left our property. But the grass is always greener, so I know that’s a possibility that I will forget how little we could manage and keep up with when we did live more rurally. Has anyone gone through this? What would you do? Any insights? Thanks for any help in this matter.
#home
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I feel so torn about a decision that my husband and I have been considering lately. I know a lot of people may not be able to relate, but any advice/thoughts/insights would be appreciated. We are considering leaving our house on 2 acres (about 50-60 minutes from the major city in our area) closer to the suburbs. We moved out here about 4.5 years ago right before we had our first child. I am now currently pregnant with baby #3 while taking care of our 2 toddlers. Initially the dream was to homestead. We thought of this property as a stepping stone to bigger land someday eventually (but realistically, we wouldn’t be able to buy a bigger property for probably another at least 10 years). We have chickens, a garden, and hopefully plan to get meat rabbits eventually, but that’s really the max we could probably handle for a long time in the homesteading realm. There are so many reasons why we are considering this, but I am so torn and kind of heartbroken. First of all, we have no help from family. So it’s just my husband (who works full time from home) and I (who stays home) trying to keep up with our yard and take care of our house and kids. It feels endless. We can never even remotely catch up with anything that needs to be done on our property and inside our home. I think this adds so much weight to me particularly, but also my husband. We made our garden too big when we first moved here, but even with making it half the size this year, we just cannot stay on top of it. The weeds get so out of control because we do not have the time to take care of it. And then when we do grow things, we have no time to preserve it (except occasionally fermenting) so it just feels like a failure. Chickens have been good so far, but some days it feels like we barely have time for that. Our regular yard maintenance has not been good. We can stay on top of mowing the lawn, but we have insanely large weeds where normal landscaping should be. It just looks so bad, but again, where are we supposed to find the time to stay on top of this stuff? Our yard looks junky because we don’t have the time to take care of it beyond keeping it mowed. Our house is cluttered and I have no time to declutter. We can’t take on meat rabbits until we have a handle on these other aspects, so if we stay here, it could be several years before we can really get to it. Another issue is, we are Orthodox Christians, and there are no churches in our area, they are all in the city/suburb areas. Going to another denomination of church is not an option. Our drive to church is 50 minutes. Because of this we cannot make other church services during the week at all, only the Divine Liturgy on Sundays and it’s important to us that we be able to make more services than we do, but we just can’t with our commute. Since our church is so far away, it means most of our friends are also far away, living in the suburbs. We have been unable to nurture these friendships for ourselves and our kids so far. It’s too much to be driving there often in order to be close with them, so a lot of the time, I feel secluded and isolated. My oldest toddler is extremely social, the most friendly kid I’ve ever met, and I know he will want to have close friendships as he gets older, but living out here would make this very hard. We are planning to homeschool so that adds another layer of seclusion that may become an issue as they grow up so far from our community. Living out here, we have great neighbors. They’re all retired couples, and extremely nice, but it’s not the same as having families with young kids like us. So out here we have no community. Even if we did have one out here, it’s very important for us to be close to our church community specifically, so it also just wouldn’t be the same. Another aspect is my grandma is declining slowly in health and I am very close to her. She lives in the suburbs, so if things started to get worse for her, I wouldn’t be able to see her regular with how far the commute is. That would be so hard for me.
Now, we love our home and our yard, and just today I was sobbing while outside with the kids just thinking about not living here anymore and how much I would miss the beauty around us, the space, all of the work we put into planting our fruit trees. If we did move, we would only move to somewhere in the suburbs where we could have a garden (much smaller this time), chickens, and meat rabbits (although I don’t know how common it is to find a home like this in the suburbs). It would be much less yard to manage so it wouldn’t get as junky/weedy if we downscale to what we can actually handle. On the other hand, we love that we have no rules where we currently live and I do not want someone telling me I can’t have chickens or meat rabbits. There is also the reality that if we move, we would have to get used to less privacy (although right now, we can still see all of our neighbors fairly closely, we just aren’t right on top of them like you are in the suburbs/city). I also worry about safety and if things like riots would happen in the political climate we face. Although I do not want to base my decision on fear of something that might not happen. I also worry about if the economy got much worse and we had to produce more of our food (although I truly do not know how that would be possible with what we have on our plate), and we wouldn’t have the space to do so if we move. But like I said, even if we had to produce more food, I don’t know much we realistically could ever produce for ourselves given our time restraints. I really don’t understand how families with kids are able to homestead and do so much (or at least it seems to be).
I just worry that we will regret leaving after a year or something and wish we never left our property. But the grass is always greener, so I know that’s a possibility that I will forget how little we could manage and keep up with when we did live more rurally. Has anyone gone through this? What would you do? Any insights? Thanks for any help in this matter.
#home
source
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