Our house is getting larger as our kids leave the nest for full-time employment (daughter) and college (middle). Over drinks, girlfriends will ask if we plan to move (with most of our friends in similar life stages). It’s a hushed conversation. We don’t want to talk about the elephant in the basement that now fits in the basement because there are no longer teenagers in the space every weekend.

My first response to the question is always, “We can’t afford to downsize.” With the Denver-metro area housing market we could not downsize without spending a lot more money in the neighborhoods I want to move to and the tall basement ceilings we get in a suburban home.

Thankfully, when we purchased our home (fourteen years ago) we fell in love with the home’s layout because we could grow old(er) in the flexible, multiple level home.

And, yet I did not want to share a work/office space with my husband. I told him we (me) needed our own floor. He already has a leased space with his business partners for his bootstrapped digital healthcare startup (past the startup phase, but still feels like we are cash strapped)! #startuphumor

I have my home office on the main level with views of our back yard. Deer and coyotes visit regularly. It’s a work in a very long progress phase. Here is a peek into a few updates. My office was on hiatus with the arrival of our rescue puppy I shared on Instagram.

For a while, my husband’s home office was in the closet. Seriously, it was seasonal storage for our ski gear and then his home office. It was basically a shelf in a closet. He worked standing up. It was time my husband came out of the closet.

To make this happen I had to give up a dedicated movie/teen space and make room for a small desk and a few office essentials. All while keeping it cozy. It helps that it has a dual-sided fireplace that we recently refaced with stack stone. Stay tuned for details!

I knew my husband loved his new space when I came home and he had organized all of his work files and shredded ten pounds of legal and accounting docs! He found these inexpensive storage boxes at Ikea.