The Pleasures of Moving

As many of you know, a few months ago I was faced with a difficult decision--to move to a new town in another state (you can read about it in my blog post, "When God's Plans and Your Plans Don't Mesh") or to stay put. Over the summer, I've shared our moving journey and how we've remodeled much of the first floor of our new house. Today, I'm sharing a few of the perks I've enjoyed from the move.

1. Close proximity to schools, grocery stores, library, and my husband's job.
I never realized how much time I actually spent in my car until we moved here. Where before, stores and schools--even baseball practice--were a minimum of fifteen minutes away, now we're within five minutes of schools, a large grocery store, baseball diamonds, and the library. An added bonus? I used to drive 50 minutes to have coffee with writer friends. Now the commute is fifteen. I love it!

2. An established neighborhood with sidewalks and friendly neighbors.
Our previous home was in a subdivision, but it was new and underdeveloped. I really enjoy walking my little dog around our new neighborhood, which is full of mature trees, pretty landscaping, and people who wave and say "hi." Maybe not everyone would think this is a perk, but I certainly do!

3. Gorgeous parks only minutes from our house.
I'm a nature gal; always have been, always will be. So when I drove a short ten minutes to one of the most beautiful metro-parks I've seen, my soul sang. We've been too busy and the weather has been unusually hot this summer to explore the trails, but in a few weeks we'll be hiking, and I can't wait.

4. Fantastic shopping and a movie theater nearby.
Confession time: I'm a snob when it comes to malls. Before we moved, we had a shopping mall, but it had lost all of its anchor stores except for Target, and it lacked variety. Since our old town was within 45 minutes of three big cities, we usually drove to one of their malls for major shopping trips. Imagine my delight when we found a new, incredible outdoor shopping mall, with a movie theater, minutes away.

Maybe you're noticing a theme? The biggest perk of our move is we have gained time, precious minutes and hours that used to be spent driving in a car. With that time, we are saving money. We were spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars on gas for our vehicles each month. I am estimating our gas budget will be cut in half.

What is your favorite thing about where you live? Least favorite? I'm curious what perks you get from where you live!

Have a fabulous weekend!

Tweet

Share