Downsized From Suburbs to Live in Minnesota Wilderness; No Regrets

We have a New Yorker cartoon magnetized to our fridge that features a bedraggled but happy couple crawling through a desert with the caption, “It’s nice that we want the same things.”

My husband’s family frequently laments to me, “He never does things the easy way!” without truly understanding that this is my preferred way of doing things, too.

Against the grain. Off script. Rarely the easy or obvious way.

So, while our friends and colleagues were buying larger (or second) homes, bigger SUVs, and new boats, we had our eyes on a much smaller prize: a modest plot of land in the wilds of northern Minnesota.

We played the long game

We’d been living in a 1,840-square-foot suburban split-level home near the Twin Cities, but had dreamt of moving up north for years.

Neither of us are from small or even rural towns, but we’d both fallen in love with northern Minnesota on separate visits to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, which has several access points in and around the city of Ely.

In 2020, even before we were married, we put a bid on a unicorn real estate listing for a home in the Northwoods of Ely. We were outbid, but the fervor with which we both approached this possible venture (even as some of our closest family and friends asked, “What are you thinking?”) was a clear indication that our hearts were in the same place.

So when, three years later, we saw the listing for a fixer-upper on the other side of Ely with half the square footage of our suburban home and for a fraction of the cost of the home we’d bid on in 2020, we jumped at a second chance to live in the area we’d been pining for.

Plus, our shared and innate aversion to “keeping up with the Joneses” made the promise of downsizing all the more appealing.

We rearranged our lives to realize our dream

The property was clearly priced for the land — 0.61 acres of wilderness a stone’s throw from the Canadian border — and not the dilapidated building that was generously described in the Zillow listing as a “seasonal cabin.”

In reality, it was a mobile home that had served for many years as a summer fishing camp for an old bachelor who valued function over form. It gave him shelter from the rain and mosquitoes, but it was far from what we needed: a year-round home for a growing family.

It was 2023, and we had a toddler and another child on the way with hopes for one more after that. I was working as a communications consultant, and my husband, Jared, a burnt-out, post-COVID healthcare worker, decided to quit his stable job and dedicate his time to renovating our new home before we moved the entire family up there.

Transitioning to one income with one kid was challenging but manageable.

Back at our suburban homebase, I maintained my roster of consulting clients. We saved on childcare costs by keeping my daughter home with me and intermittently relying on family (about an hour’s drive away) for babysitting.

However, once our second child arrived, it became immediately clear that we would have to pivot once again. I was often outnumbered and always stretched thin, so we decided to enroll our eldest child in full-time daycare.

Meanwhile, I took on a second job as founder of the Society of Working Moms, which generated a growing stream of income via memberships while also making me feel less invisible in my own working motherhood journey.

In the summer of 2024, we sold Jared’s house and made the move up north

Despite the 50% reduction in square footage, we hardly miss the extra space. Our new home has essentially the same specs as our previous one: 3 bedrooms, 1.5 bathrooms. We simply traded a formal dining room for a dine-in kitchen, and a three-season porch for a front deck and more outdoor space.

Most importantly, we’ve found a community that can’t be beat. In the ‘burbs, we lived just close enough to our friends that we never bothered making any new ones, and just far enough away that people rarely visited, making our relationships feel fairly one-sided.

Here, we’ve been forced to cultivate new relationships and are fortunate to be surrounded by people with whom we have a lot in common: entrepreneurs, DIY’ers, and weekend adventurers, all who understand that with a more remote life comes a little more time behind the wheel.

This life suits us. I honestly can’t imagine upsizing again. Maybe we’ll eventually want more square footage, especially if we have a third child, but on the whole, we like living in a smaller space and at a slower pace.