09/23/2026
The basement bedroom would’ve solved the space problem.
It wouldn’t have solved the parenting problem.
In 2019, Andi and I made the very reluctant decision to leave the home where we’d brought all three of our children home.
We loved that house. But we may have loved our street even more.
We spent hours outside with our neighbours on summer days and warm nights. Our kids had friends right there whenever they wanted them. There were sleepovers, driveway conversations and neighbours who became real friends.
For a few years, everything fit.
Then the kids got older. Some neighbours moved. And things that had never been a problem started becoming problems.
👉🏻 Our boys were still sharing a bedroom.
👉🏻 Our oldest was getting closer to his teenage years.
👉🏻 One wanted music to fall asleep. The other needed silence.
👉🏻 Neither of them had a space that felt like his own.
👉🏻 Andi worked from home and her office was a desk in the corner of the same family room where the kids played PlayStation.
👉🏻 There was nowhere quiet to work, do homework or get away from each other for a while.
We could’ve finished the basement and added a fourth bedroom. On paper, that was the obvious answer.
But we didn’t feel our oldest was ready to sleep down there by himself.
And moving one child to the basement wouldn’t have changed how the rest of the house worked for our family.
So, with a lot of doubt and even more guilt, we decided to move.
We weren’t changing schools. We were moving from the Orchard to Alton Village, one subdivision over. But as far as the kids were concerned, we might as well have moved to Mars.
Our oldest was reaching the age when friends could knock on the door after school. The kids could walk to school. Their lives were right there.
One move changed all of that.
Andi carried an enormous amount of guilt. There were tears. There were many late-night conversations about whether we were doing the right thing.
Then, just a few months later, the world shut down.
From a market point of view, our timing wasn’t great. Prices rose after we sold, and it would’ve been easy to look back and say we should’ve waited.
But we couldn’t have known what was coming.
And five people trying to work, learn, sleep and live in a home that already felt too small would’ve been incredibly hard.
That experience taught me something I now tell other families. The hardest homes to leave aren’t the ones you hate.
They’re the ones you still love, but that no longer work for the family you’ve become.
Seven years later, none of us spends time thinking about the worries that felt enormous back then.
The kids adjusted. Life carried on. And the guilt eventually disappeared.
A home can hold some of your family’s best memories and still no longer be the right home for its next chapter.
Space isn’t just square footage.
It’s privacy. Peace. A place to work. Somewhere to do homework. And enough room for everyone to grow without constantly being on top of one another.
We didn’t leave because we stopped loving that house.
We left because we loved the people living inside it enough to admit that it no longer worked.
