Wow the first month of 2010 went by so quickly we barely noticed
We had a full month of no traveling, which was a nice change, after getting back from visiting our parents in southern CA.
This year our major goal is: SIMPLIFY. We did the big house with the big yard in the suburbs for 3 years, had a big real estate portfolio, traveled almost every 4-6 weeks, and we tried to run multiple businesses without being able to focus on any one of them.
Now, we’re living in this rental condo in Scottsdale that’s 1/3 the size of our TX house, with no yard to maintain and nothing to worry about when we do travel. We’re pleasantly surprised that we love this living arrangement a lot!
We’ve been cooking more too – which is something we always wanted to do but for some reason didn’t do as frequently when we had a very nice kitchen in our big house. David thinks it’s because this place feels “cozy”. Whatever the reason, it’s a positive development.
I’m also happy to find a local Chinese market to buy groceries and snacks; less than 30 min. drive whenever I miss “home food”.
It’s been nice living in Scottsdale – the weather is wonderful in the “winter” except for a few bouts of rainstorm last couple of weeks.
David has found a group to play ultimate Frisbee with every weekend. He’ll probably look for a hockey team to join too.
It has been a few weeks since we moved into our rental condo here in north Scottsdale. We are about 80% unpacked and our furniture fits nicely, even though we “downsized” from our 4300-s.f. “McMansion” in Texas to about 1/3 the size (and much less wasted space).
See below for a 5-min. video tour of our new home. We’ll be here for at least 6 months (and enjoy the nice “winter” here in Scottsdale). Not sure what we’re going to do yet for the summer (probably not staying in Phoenix area).
If you’re in Phoenix or Scottsdale area, let us know if you want to meet up in person!
After a few months of homeless roaming (mostly in CA and along the west coast), we finally moved ourselves (and our stuff from mini-storage) to a condo in north Scottsdale, AZ. We drove from Long Beach to Scottsdale in about 6 hours, slept on an air mattress for the night, then had the movers meet us at the mini storage the next day.
It took about 4 hours including driving time to get our stuff out of storage and into the condo on the 2nd floor – glad we had help! For the most part the move went really smoothly. The only major glitch is that we forgot to get gas turned on at our unit, thinking everything was electric. Then we found out there was no hot water! Oh, well, lots of cold showers until the gas gets turned on in a few days…
It’s remarkable how little we missed our stuff in the 10×10 storage (it was full with furniture and many boxes). I think we can go down to half the number of boxes and furniture when we move again
We shot a 3-min. video today of our short-term rental home in Mountain View, CA.
This will be our home base and office for the next month as we visit with friends in the Bay Area. Let’s meet up if you’re in the area! We’ll be here until 9/18 or so.
BYOC (Bring Your Own Chair) if you come visit us because we’re kind of lacking in furniture as you can see in the video
P.S. You may be wondering why we’re renting a house for a month in the Bay Area. Well, we are pursuing our dream of a mobile lifestyle, inspired by Tim Ferris’ book “The 4 Hour Work Week” (on our book recommendations list). We are so blessed to have the freedom and flexibility to pull it off so far!
