Large courtyard or small? 🤔

Ok, we wanted a house and not an apartment. Reason was primarily the space , well lit rooms etc. However, the biggest reason was ‘MORE LIGHT’ in general. And more running around area for my kids.

A year before we bought the home we live in, or rather a few months before we actively started looking at homes for purchase. This came at a huge expense to us on weekends to just go around looking to open houses on weekends. Weekends are the only “free” time we have. There is no actual free time , you see we have kids and we have chores to do on weekends.

A year before we landed this home and we started our search etc, we had our kid have a diagnosis of early onset myopia. She is too little to have short sightedness at this age, especially since we dont have a TV and we discourage screen time at home. We cant avoid it at school , but what can we do? We did allow her to read, which she overdid .. a lot , now that we think about it. Now that I think about it, I used to find her under tables or lying in our dark living room in our rented apartment (that room had light issues). I cant help blaming myself for not catching that on time. Well, hind sight in 20-20, isn’t it?

So when we went looking for homes, we actively looked for a home that had a backyard. We bought this house, although it was old and not very close to CBD where we worked, I liked that it had a larger backyard. I fell for the backyard actually. And I can say that we have used the backyard to the hilt. Our kids play there most of the time and we actively send them out if we can. Even though our home is light and bright and airy, and I love it, I send my girl out to play. My research into this topic, showed that more sunlight is what is needed to keep eyesight healthy in young children. Humans of all ages can benefit from sunlight, is what I read frequently.

So, we bought a somewhat large by typical standards. We prioritised that as a positive point for purchase. Every family is different, but finding a home that best suits your priorities can be challenging but is totally possible.