Tackling 2022 Goals: Decluttering and Upgrading Our Home

Partly borne of necessity, I'm getting an early start to my 2022 goals.  One of the biggest strains in my relationship with my partner is keeping up with household chores.  We downsized last year to a smaller house, and I thought this would make it easier to keep up with things.  It hasn't.  Our house just isn't working for us in its current form.  

The Challenges and Opportunities

We are living in the first home I purchased in Florida.  I got an incredible deal on a foreclosure in 2012.  The house lies just outside a posh area.  There's a golf course and country club on the other side of the main road connecting our street.  Tom Cruise built a condo about a mile away where he reportedly plans to live full time.  The beach is a short bike ride away.  And that "poshness" across the street is creeping over to our neighborhood.  A private equity firm/community bank built a fancy 4 story office at the end of our street, and many of our neighbors are sprucing up their homes.  It just makes sense to make improvements to our house from both a practical perspective and a financial one.

Our first project is new flooring.  We have the original hospital tiles the home was built with in 2002.  They are a vomit yellow and yes, look just like what you might expect to see in a doctor's office.  I chose a beautiful porcelain tile to replace it.  While we are waiting for the installation, we are getting rid of things that are in the way:  last week, my partner took an old mattress and table (from the Airbnb) and the headboard to our old bed to the street for pickup.  These cleared a lot of space from one of the bedrooms, but there's more work to do.  We also moved a lot of the Airbnb supplies to the laundry room of the Airbnb.  Our home already feels more spacious.

It feels great to have a more spacious home.  This keeps me motivated to purge more stuff.