Our Floorplan

Our Floorplan
900 sq ft

About Me

My photo
Call us crazy, nuts or temporary loss of senses. That's what they said....this is about the quiet quest to simplify our life! The process of eliminating the clutter and stress and taking back our freedom. Like many small business owners….we were hit hard due to the economy. We found ourselves rethinking the direction we were heading. Should we gamble and keep the big house and "stuff" because that's what everyone does or do we reexamine what is truly important in our lives? 9 Hundred Square feet is an open-ended journey in living “Smaller, Simpler and Stress-Free” lives!

Thursday, June 23, 2011

An Idea Was Born

(This may not be the best picture of  the entrance to our place)

Juan's perspective, revisiting the past

Shawn and I have always been intrigued with living in a “small space”. We are addicted to HGTV and love watching the shows centering on small lofts, homes, condos, etc. We’d sit and day dream about “What if we lived in a small place?" "Wouldn’t it be cool to live in a place like that?” However, the discussions never grew beyond the dream stage until the spring of 2010.

We were on one of our weekend bicycle adventures and were discussing how the economic crash seemed to have changed people’s priorities. People seemed to be seeking out the simpler pleasures in life. Reflecting on our life together, I commented how happy we were when we were in the first year of our marriage. At that time we lived in a 640sqft apartment Just Shawn, Me and Flloyd (Shawn’s parrot).

We were in our mid to late 30’s, both had successful careers and were earning good money.  However, our lifestyle was pretty simple. Because we weren’t encumbered by a lot of home maintenance or a huge mortgage, we had more time to do the things we loved, like biking and weekend getaways. However, like most newlyweds, we began to start looking for a home as we “needed” more space. Mind you we were not cramped and only had what we needed to furnish our one bedroom apartment. SO, by the time our 1st anniversary rolled around, we were signing papers on a brand new 3 bedroom condo and scrambling to furnish it as fast as we could. After being in the condo for two years we decided, “Well we need a bigger place!" "We do not have enough room!” Nothing else with our family had changed, it was still me, Shawn and the crotchety bird. SO, by the time our 3rd anniversary rolled around we were signing papers on a much larger free standing home with a two car garage.

While we were riding and talking (ok, I was talking, Shawn was listening) we discovered our current home. We were both immediately intrigued with the place. In fact, for the next several weekends we found ourselves turning off the bike path to ride by it and even finding excuses to drive to Central Phoenix so we could see it.

We kept talking about the “tiny patio home” and how we’d love to live there.  As we talked about it more and more, we began to analyze just what it was that made our first year together so special. It seemed to boil down to the freedom we enjoyed. We weren’t encumbered by a quest to obtain “stuff”. We lived in and used every square foot of our 640sqft apartment home.  Because our home was small, we weren’t slaves to it. Consequently we had more free time to enjoy other pursuits. As we began to understand why that time was so good, we began to realize that the only thing keeping us from enjoying that lifestyle again was us and the obsession of obtaining more and BIGGER stuff!

So where do we go from here?.......

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