Upsizing....it's happening.

California casual style living room designed by Joshua Jones, JJones Design Co. It was rendered by Stuccco.

So, I wanted to make a quick post about an observation I’ve had recently. A common trend that’s been around for a while is downsizing; whether that be because you’re an empty nester, or you’ve applied the principles of minimalism and have configured your life to work in less space, or you’ve gone the route of the tiny house craze. Whatever your reasons, there’s a lot of good reasons to reduce your living footprint; property taxes, maintenance, utility costs, and so on, but I’m not really going to go over the pros and cons of downsizing. It’s the uptick in the exact opposite, upsizing, that I’m curious about.

I’ve recently been getting a lot of client and client requests for design work for people who suddenly are buying homes, often their first and they don’t have a lot of “stuff” to fill it with. They are part of the tribe of those making an exodus out of urban environments for the suburbs or smaller towns and communities. Covid has had a tremendous impact on work-life and what it means for many people to work remotely. Most places in the US are still not fully open and as they do, many businesses being faced with deciding how to bring people back to an office are making the decision to turn this temporary remote work situation into something permanent.

This has resulted in a lot of people who were used to living in expensive, small urban apartments or condos now seeing just how much square footage their dollar can buy them in less pricey markets. While it may seem a thrill to be able to afford something 4-5 times the size of the little studio you once had in the city, you might want to ask yourself….do I really need this much space? Everyone has their own answers and there’s lot of good reasons to upsize, especially if you want to start or expand your family; whether that be the human or furry baby kind.

I went through this myself when my partner, Jeffry, and I decided to leave San Francisco and move back to Seattle. For real estate, you can’t get much more expensive than SF, so even though we are paying much less in rent than we used to, we did get a slightly larger place than we used to have. Having some extra storage and room is certainly nice.

I simply wanted to mention something I’ve been seeing pop up more often and wondering if any of you are experiencing this right now and how it’s affected your life decisions. Please comment below! I’d love to hear from you!