So…yeah….our house sold. Do I sound surprised? Or maybe just worried?
Weeks ago, to my perennial surprise, Melissa decided the time was right for us to take the leap and sell our Palms house. Even though we were a little late in the local Real Estate cycle (listing our house in late June). In 3 days, we had 2 offers. Our renovations helped the house stand out from the competition, allowing us to get the price we wanted and sell quickly. Our hard work had paid off!
Except – now we were ‘homeless.’ Now what? And to where?
A little background
For several years, Melissa and I have been dreaming of our family living more self-sufficiently. We thought about being further away from the big city and creating something that would produce energy and food for us for the rest of our lives. It wouldn’t be too elaborate or too expensive, but it would be something we could create based on our knowledge and experience. At the top of the list: design something we could build ourselves. Then, I began to convince Melissa… subliminally at first. Haha!
We could either find an old home to renovate or build our new home. But where would this dream home be? We thought we would need at least 10 acres of good land and a water source running through it. As we begin to search for potential homes with land, we slowly realized that Florida may not be the right place for this type of small farm. Good land is expensive in Florida, and most of the soil in Florida is sandy. It can be extremely hot and hurricanes are always a possibility.
From that point, our thinking turned to futures outside of Florida. But where? The idea of moving out of the state and what that entails was daunting, as you can imagine. Luckily, Melissa’s job allows her to work from home. So, at least ONE piece of the puzzle was in place. But, I would need to leave my faculty position and we’d risk living on one income until I found a job wherever we landed.
Narrowing Our Next Steps
If you could live anywhere in the U.S., where would you go? Near would you decide? We started narrowing our daunting search. We did know that we wanted to stay on the eastern side of the country and not too far north. The midwest was out. Been there, done that (read: nope on those winters). The west coast seemed too far, even though Washington and Oregon were enticing for their open space. I liked the idea of Maine or Vermont, but it also seems far too cold for our Floridian bones. Essentially, we began to narrow our thinking to the milder climates in the Southeast: from Tennessee to Georgia.
We drove from the west coast of Florida up through Georgia to Tennessee (see comically non-detailed map above). Within minutes of arriving in Chattanooga, Melissa wasn’t feeling it. Okay, not Chattanooga then. Nashville is beautiful, but also very pricey, and Knoxville was soon out of the running as well. So, from there, we drove back down through the Georgia mountains, bypassing the Atlanta metro. We headed east towards the sleepy city of Athens and its even sleepier surrounding communities.
The Athens area was different. There, we could breathe and we could see ourselves and our family living there. We both said aloud what we were feeling….we loved it here.
We drove back to Florida with a lot of decisions to make and an entire house to pack.
[…] the Palms house went under contract, we knew it would be a crazy summer. Melissa already had a business trip […]