Moving Into Our First Home: Downsizing and Settling into a 1250 sq ft Townhouse

It’s been a while since I last posted, and I’ll admit I felt a little like a brand-new blogger again—nervous and excited. The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of packing, planning, and unpacking, and it feels right to start at the beginning.

When I last wrote, we were leaving a comfortable interim rental and moving into our very first home: a 1250 square foot townhouse just a couple of kilometers away. The move was full of small logistical challenges, unexpected lessons about downsizing, and the kind of daily details that make moving simultaneously thrilling and exhausting.

(Real Estate Listing Photo)

I had packed most of our belongings and stacked boxes in the garage, feeling pretty pleased with myself for the downsizing effort—until the reality of fitting everything into a smaller home hit. My husband took on the truck logistics, tracking down a small moving truck that could actually fit in our townhouse driveway. After requesting the specific size we needed, we had to wait until 48 hours before our move to know if a truck would be available. Not wanting to worry, I prayed that one of the companies would come through, and thankfully a U-Haul was ready for us at 2:00 on Friday afternoon.

Possession time for the house was 1:00 p.m., so we arranged for a carpet cleaner to clean the upstairs carpets and booked a cable technician to hook up TV, phone, and internet at that time. Those appointments went smoothly—both professionals arrived on schedule and finished quickly, which was a huge relief. While they worked, I kept busy unpacking essential kitchen items I had brought over in our cars and our son’s car, trying to make at least one part of the home functional.

There was a lot of rapid unpacking: opening boxes, putting dishes into cupboards, and doing my best to create order out of chaos. It wasn’t perfectly organized at first, but at least things were out of boxes and in their places well enough for us to live. Then I returned to the rental while the truck was loaded and the move began in earnest.

With generous help from friends and family, we completed the move in three truckloads and, to our delight, slept in our own beds in the new house that same night. That immediate comfort was a triumph—despite the boxes, we had reclaimed the most important part of home: our beds.

(The kitchen before all the unpacking…)

What I quickly learned is that moving into a smaller space requires more than just reducing the number of boxes. Limited floor area makes it hard to find temporary staging space to sort and organize. At times I found myself carrying piles of items from one room to another, then back again, searching for the right place for each thing. The living room, in particular, temporarily resembled a set from a decluttering show as we worked through decisions about what to keep, what to donate, and what to store.

Over the past few weeks I’ve put every organizational trick I know into practice: labeling boxes clearly, designating a few “essential” boxes to unpack first, using vertical storage to free up floor space, and rotating items back out when something didn’t fit. I also discovered the value of a few simple habits: taking regular breaks, asking for help when needed, and being willing to defer perfect placement until there was a clear system in place.

It’s been challenging, but the progress has been steady. Yesterday felt particularly satisfying—I finally had the sense that I had climbed out from under the mountain of boxes and could breathe again. The house is mostly organized now: just a few boxes remain, and I can walk freely through every room. That feeling of space and order is hugely rewarding after weeks of moving and rearranging.

We’re not completely finished, but we’re close enough that I can’t wait to show you the finished rooms and share how we adapted our belongings to fit the townhouse lifestyle. I’ll be back soon with a proper tour and more reflections on what helped the most during this move—the solutions that really saved time, space, and sanity.

The rest of the story will follow.