Life Decisions

My partner and I have been having a really good discussion. This discussion has been ongoing for a few months now. It is about our future and what we are going to do with our lives. We have a rather normal life. House, kid(s), dog, car... It is becoming a daily grind though. We want more from life than what we currently have.

We are living a comfortable life, but we both want more. I'm a stay at home mum. I absolutely love it and I wouldn't change it at all. The thing I would like is to have my partner at home more often though. I see just how much he is missing out on our wee girl growing up. That's the more that I want from life. More of him. More family time together. More time than the measly 2 days he gets off work a week.

Would love to have more time to see early sunrises together, this was taken on a holiday together and we loved having the time appreciate our surroundings.

Here's our current situation: My partner gets up each week day at 5:45am so he can drive 60 minutes to work. He has to go that early because his work does not provide any car parking. Therefore he has to get there early enough to get a free park on the street. The free parks go very early.

He works all day, some days he doesn't leave his desk - he eats his lunch while working. Then at the end of the day, he goes back to the car and drives home for another 60 minutes and hope that his work does not call him requiring him to work once he gets home. He gets home in time to have tea, play with our girl, read books, then it's bed time. He does this Monday to Friday and by the end of the working week he's exhausted.

Rinse and repeat.

It's an ongoing cycle and I don't want to get down the track another 10-20 years and wonder where our lives went. I also want him to live a better life. How boring it must be for him. He can come home stressed, unhappy, tired. I want more for him. He doesn't seem to be happy from my perspective.

Here's our discussion. We live in a more expensive part of the country. That was our decision. We absolutely love it here. But it means the house we have is smaller than we like. The section is small. Our neighbours are too close. We don't have much room to grow a garden (we have a small garden currently but need to supplement it with extra food from the supermarket). There's not enough space for chickens. Grocery shopping is more expensive here. Petrol costs are high.

We are deciding if we should sell our house and move somewhere cheaper, to another part of the country that's more affordable. But more than that. We both want to be more self sufficient. We want a wee bit of land to grow organic vegetables, have chickens and get our own free range eggs. I would love my daughter to grow up with a bit of land to run around on and explore. I want more time together. The weekend is gone before it feels like it has started. We could also potentially have no mortgage. How freeing does that sound! I get really excited thinking about it.

This was taken at a holiday house (good old kiwi crib!) we stayed at. It got us thinking about changing our lifestyle.

I love thinking about everything my daughter can learn from us changing our lifestyle. I love day dreaming about us all getting involved in growing our own food. I think about the time we can have together when he's not having to rush out to work 5 days a week.

My daughter plays with her toys and makes a farm. I would love her to have real animals.

But at this stage it's still just an idea. Something to dream about. It's all a bit scary to take the plunge and give up a decent job. We've already done that when we decided that I would be a stay at home mum. To give up a second job, and the security that comes with it seems a bit scary to be without.

So we talk about other options....Maybe we look to move somewhere close to a township or city so we can still find work there first and rent for a while before we decide to sell our house and move permanently.

Or maybe we just look for part time work, just a job that is stress free and less responsibility than his current role, so there's more time to spend as a family and we get enough money to pay the bills.

Or do we just keep doing what we have been doing? Keep the job, the house and the lifestyle and forget the dream of the simple life. My partner swings back to that quite often. I think that he gets a bit overwhelmed with the thought of selling, moving and everything that comes with it.

What I'm after is some advice from those of you who have been here and done it. You've sold up. You've traded in the job for a better lifestyle. You now live 'the simple life'. Do you regret it? I can't think of anything that we might regret, but there could be lots of things we aren't thinking of.

Visiting a friendly horse and sheep.

What advice do homesteader and self sufficient people out there have for starting out? Anything they would have done differently? Should we keep the job/income we have and look to move in a few years time? Or is it better the earlier we can get started so we have more time to reap the rewards of being self sufficient?

There's lots to think about. I feel appreciation for being in this position. I know that a lot of families out there don't have the opportunity to even consider what we are. I absolutely love my life and hope that we can make it even better.