To Move or Not To Move?

[DragonfliiMama]

I am looking for different thoughts on this, maybe some insight from experienced moms. We are trying to decide whether or not to renew the lease on our apartment. We love the complex, we have friends close by in the building across the driveway, and it's close enough for dh to walk/bike to work in good weather. And we are both sick and tired of moving. There's also the timing - I'm due Aug 1, the deadline to give notice of not renewing is also Aug 1, and our lease ends Sep 30. If we move, I will need to spend the summer packing as much as I can early. Moving is an awfully big project to take on that soon after having a baby. But we do have a LOT of very supportive friends and family who will help out with every step, all I need to do is tell them what I need, and that helps a lot.

On the other hand - the apartment we have is pretty small. It's a one bedroom, but it's a loft rather than an actual bedroom. This presents a couple of problems. 1) There's no bedroom door, meaning there's no way to separate the cats from the baby. I don't know if I will need to be able to do that or not, but it makes me a little nervous to not have the option. In emergencies, I can lock the cats in the bathroom, but that is not an ok solution for long periods of time or on a regular basis. 2) There's stairs. Not a big deal with an infant, but as soon as Feather starts getting mobile... We can put up baby gates though to deal with that. 3) Space. It's not that big a place. I can do a lot of decluttering and getting rid of things we don't use or don't need immediately available, but then I need to figure out storage for things we are keeping packed. 4) And one of the biggest concerns is money. We had basically decided we need to move because the rent is rather expensive. We have the option of transferring our lease to a different unit in the same complex, which would solve all of these problems and even allow us to move this spring instead of next fall, but our rent would go up and we really can't afford that.

But here's the thing that has me reconsidering again and wondering if I can make this place work another year. Here, we are thinking "this place is fine for an infant but will it work for a 1yo?" If we move, it will be a 1bed. I'm totally ok with having the baby in our room with us, and I've been told repeatedly it works better that way for about the first year anyway. Which totally make sense to me, so that's fine. But what about the year after that? If we move now, am I going to be asking the same question a year from now? "this place is fine for a 1yo but will it work for a 2yo?" I don't want to be looking at the exact same problem again next year!

Thoughts?

We lived in a tiny no-bedroom apartment too when Lucas was born. We moved when he was about 3mos old. Packing really wasn't too tough b/c newborns sleep-eat-sleep-eat so whenever he was in bed I was packing. And, I don't know how small your apt is, but we didn't have a whole lot of stuff! There just wasn't room for it! It was a chaotic mess for the week before we moved, but it was easier moving with a 3mo-old than it was when I was trying to pack up from our 2nd apartment when we moved into our house & Lilia could crawl and get into things!

In short, I definitely vote for reducing the financial burden - if you can get a bigger place for less cost (or even if it breaks-even), I would do that rather than be stuck in a tiny place for another whole year.

[MarynMunchkins]

It's much easier to move while pregnant or with a baby than with a 1 yo.

I think one bedroom is fine as long as you have enough play space for a toddler too.

[EmJo]

ITA w/Mary. We moved from my condo to a house at the end of my first trimester. I managed the searching, packing and unpacking mostly by myself. It was not easy, but there was barely enough room for the two of us in the condo. I have never regretted the decision, and in retrospect know without a doubt that the whole moving process would've been a lot more of a pain with a baby in tow.

We moved when bub was 10weeks old from a tiny 2 bedder packed to the hilt with furniture to a 3 bedroom house. We dont need all these rooms and Asher is in with us and now we are considering selling the furniture and moving to a studio or one bedder. I would be concerned bout the cats but its a good idea to get bub used to sleeping in view on a mat or better yet in a sling on you! I wish I had made more effort with that when Asher was tiny from the outset. We moved in 3days (packing and everything) lucky my mum and husband did nearly everything. The only thing that drove me nuts was a friend who helped decided to yell and make heaps of noise in and out of the house over and over and Asher couldn''t get to sleep which made moving day really horrible. I was still on a post birth 'proove i can do everything' high so I didn't find it as hard as people make out but if you are well, I would say pregnancy would be the best time to move and get settled in.

[DragonfliiMama]

It is not so much the moving part that concerns me, as the actual living part afterwards. We have a lot of help available for the moving - it's a pain, but it's a temporary pain. Day to day living, on the other hand, is going to be much more difficult to deal with if we are in the wrong place. And the question of dealing with it all again next year is also huge - moving now will be into a 1bed which will be fine for the next year but I'm not sure about the year after that.

As it turns out, I got a phone call Mon afternoon just a few hours after posting this. There is a 1bed ranch available right downstairs from us and the office wanted to know if we want it. The rent is less than we are paying now - not by a whole lot but every little bit helps and it's questionable how much we'd be able to save no matter where we went. Being a ranch style solves all my concerns about the cats. It's still 1bed so there is still the question of possibly needing to move again next year when we need 2beds; and it's actually slightly smaller than our current place so storage is still going to be an issue. But if we are going to have to move twice I'd far prefer at least one of those moves to be a "mini-move" like this one will be. And storage is going to be an issue no matter where we go. Even if we don't move at all, I'm going to spend my summer getting rid of stuff and reorganizing. And being literally right downstairs from where we are now is going to make it so much easier. We will be able to space out the moving over a week or two rather than needing to get everything done in 1-2 days; granted, that 2 weeks includes packing but we actually won't pack hardly anything - just carry it straight downstairs! So we are thinking this is the best option if we get the go-ahead from the office.

It all hinges on them being able to re-rent our loft though. They had a showing last night for it and have 2 more people interested that they are setting up showings for but I have not heard anything about how it went last night or when the others are scheduled for. So right now it's just "wait and see". But we are really hoping one of these people will want it because this seems like the best option for us. But we are anxious to hear because if it goes through, they are going to want our place for April 1 and we will need to be out with enough time for them to come in after us and clean and repaint and whatnot. So we could be moving as early as this weekend!

My head is spinning a little from all this...