I'm Not Moving Anytime Soon, Part 1

Looking for a new house and property was really frustrating, and there is a lot to explain.  I may have to divide it into several posts.

I am in a split-foyer house, which is basically a ranch house on an above-ground basement with a front door in-between the basement and ranch.  I can't even get into the house without going up or down stairs and I'm tired of stairs.  And as I get older, I will get tireder of them.  The house is about 20'x40', which means that all the rooms are on the small side (by US standards at least).  Well, 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, kitchen, living room, dining room, hallway and stairs doesn't leave much per room.  It was a "starter home", but after 29 years, when do I get beyond "start"?

The basement would be fine if I didn't have some serious wood-working floor equipment and gardening shelves and tables.  I can hardly move around in it.  Indeed, if I didn't have all the floor equipment on mobile bases so I could push them around to make room, I wouldn't be able to move around in the basement at all.  And upstairs, I have 7 bookcases, 3 large cat trees, a large aquarium, stereo equipment, secretary desk, 60" flat TV, no attic storage space, etc.

I'm not in any way complaining about what I have, but I've run out of space.  I gave away my sofa and loveseat set years ago.  Yeah, I might have "too much stuff".  But right or wrong, I feel cramped.

The yard is also a problem.  A half acre sounds big.  That's about average for semi-rural property here.  But with the property surrounded by the 100' tall trees in the edges of the neighbors' yards, I don't get much sunlight.  I can't get any of the neighbors to let me have the ones blocking most of my sunlight cut down (professionally and at my expense).

And I like to go fishing.  But the nearest decent places are almost an hour away and 1.5 hours away.  I don't like driving.  Some people do, but it bores me to death.  My brain stands to shut down after about 30 minutes...  I wanted to be closer to those places, which are in more rural Maryland.

And my town is a traffic bottleneck.  It can take 15 minutes to drive 5 miles, and everything useful is on the other side of town.  I'm really tired of that.

So I'm feeling cramped inside and lacking good gardening sunlight outside and feeling to far away from good fishing.  And been here 29 years; I can walk through this house in pitch-black.  So I felt the only decision was to move.

The problem is that what I want in house and property and location doesn't seem to be easy to get.  But this is getting long, so I'll post about that tomorrow...