Sonysunshine's Profile

It's not so much urban vs suburban for me, but rather which particular city or suburb. There are awful cities and wonderful suburbs and everything in between. I think most of us dread the idea of living somewhere without beauty and life. It's those places dull people and people without options end up in.

Currently living in Old Town Alexandria, Va with four kids in a small townhouse.

My biggest challenge is our entry way. We have four children and live in a small townhouse, and, much like an earlier poster, our entryway is often a mess with shoes and jackets and bags all over. I'd like somewhere to put 6 to 12 pairs of shoes and 6 or more jackets neatly! No closet, but the area is a long hallway. I'm thinking hooks and some sort of shoe storage.

We bought an upright wheeled AV stand for our flat screen TV. It's a stand often used by businesses and conferences. When we want to watch TV, we just wheel it out from its parking spot in a corner. I love it. When pushed against the wall, it leaves the rest of the room free. And when we watch TV, we can wheel it right into the middle of our small living room.

With good savings and good timing we managed to buy a small townhome in Old Town Alexandria right outside DC. Everything is expensive here. But our jobs are a quick drive across the river and we did not want to spend our time commuting.

One interesting factor to keep in mind is that there aren't very many older children living in these kinds of areas. They've all left for better schools and bigger homes. So my children are having trouble making friends with anyone who lives within walking distance from us.

But we are living in an exciting area near a metro and near museums, National monuments, parks, etc. It's all about trade offs.

Dang, what a great condo! I love it when people raise children in environments generally considered difficult. We don't all have to move to the suburbs and live in tacky homes designed completely around children. Children aren't hot house flowers. They can live in any number of environments. It's most important that we let them know how much they add to our lives, not detract.

We have four children and currently live in an urban townhouse.

Being a military family and being in a career that moves...a lot.. let's see...since marriage - we've lived in seven states, four of them twice. Twice overseas. And now back to DC. So at least 14 places we've had all of our stuff completely unpacked and pictures hanging. This doesn't include my own two tours in the military before marriage, the various moves within tours due to space on base becoming available and all the dorms plus growing up in various homes in the US. We're great at moving in a place quickly!

At first, I thought this article was going to be about following trends - ripping out perfectly good bathrooms to replace everything with something more trendy. I think we get into a place where we think we can't be happy unless our homes reflect exactly what we like at the moment. And I'm curious, as a new home buyer, is anyone ever "done" refinishing their homes? Or do we always have a project going on?