We’ve been living the #burblife for 5 months now and I am often asked if I like suburb life, so wanted to share the story of how we got here.

Kevin and I both grew up in the northern suburbs of Chicago and the question wasn’t if we’d move to the suburbs, it was when. I LOVE the city. I love all that is has to offer – the energy, the restaurants, the people, the culture – I could go on and on. Leaving the city for the suburbs wasn’t really on my radar. At first when people would ask, “when will you move to the suburbs?” I’d shrug and say probably in 5 years. Once we got pregnant, my timeline changed and my answer was 3-4 years. Well, I lasted all of 5 months having a baby in the city and here’s why…

        {closing day}

Kevin planted roots in Bucktown almost a decade ago. When were dating there came a time when Kevin’s roommates moved out and I moved in. We dated, got engaged, married and welcomed our first baby in our condo. We had so many happy memories there. Before we got pregnant, Kevin had the itch to move. We entertained the idea and casually looked for a new place in the city, but nothing was ever compelling enough for us to give up the space or location we had.

Our condo was roomy, but the one thing our we were was missing was a garage. We parked our cars on the street and never had any issues finding parking spot, but more often than not I’d forget which surrounding street my car was parked on. We lived in a coachhouse that was below ground level, so we had to use a flight of stairs just to get to street level.

Once Caroline was born Kevin started sending me listings he liked in the suburbs. I’d promptly delete them. My mom always told me having a baby in the city was so much fun. My parents moved to the suburbs when I was 2 years old and they were pregnant with my brother. They always spoke so fondly of their city years with me and I had envisioned that for us. However, not having a garage parking spot and constantly hauling my UPPAbaby stroller got old really fast and I didn’t think I’d last another winter doing that. This wasn’t the sole reason we moved, but this served as the catalyst to indulge Kevin in his suburb search.

Being a real estate broker, I always joke that Kevin was hands down my worst client. I thought to myself if he was my client, how would I handle this? I would educate my buyer. I would show my client each suburb and tell them about the school system, community, restaurants etc. Which is exactly what I did. Through the course of what I thought was an educational exercise, we found a house we both liked, which caught me off guard. I knew we hadn’t seen enough properties, but I was pleasantly surprised by this one. The home was in a wonderful neighborhood with a great school district. It had been well maintained, we loved the curb appeal and it had enough space for us. It was also close to the highway, Sheridan Road and the metra giving us plenty of options to get to the city quickly.  It checked a lot of boxes. There were some updates we needed to-do and others we wanted to-do to make the house more functional for us. I was on board with the vision of this, but I didn’t think I was in the headspace to make the move.

We looked at a few more homes, but kept coming back to this one in particular. We decided to make an offer and the rest is history. We closed in June, but didn’t move in until October. We did quite a bit of renovations, which took longer than expected – always seems to be the case with construction. We got all new doors, hardware and light fixtures which made a world of difference. We also updated our breakfast room with new hardwood floors, shiplap walls and remodeled the existing fireplace. The living room was our favorite room in the house and we wanted to actually use it, so we made that our family room. Did you know most new construction homes don’t have a formal living room? Our generation wants to use every nook of their homes. What the previous owners used at their family’s family room we had made into two rooms – an office and a mudroom. We felt like that would serve our family better and be best for resale. We also painted the interior and exterior of the house, got a new roof and updated our master bathroom.

We are currently in the process of working with Mandarine home to complete some interior projects. Once those rooms are all done I will share them with you. I’m so excited to see everything come together! We have more plans to update our home and have a bigger project we want to do if this ends up being our home for the long haul.

I love suburb life and our home. I know we will have so many wonderful memories here. For me, life feels easier in the suburbs. I like the community feel and seeing so many familiar faces. The suburbs also feel somewhat new, because even though I grew up here it’s my first time experiencing burb life as an adult & mom. I am lucky many of my friends and family live here and I’m constantly meeting new people. I also have clients that I’m helping them find their home and my clients often end up becoming friends.

If there’s no traffic I can get to the city in 25 minutes. And if you follow me on IG you can see from my stories that I am downtown often for work and pleasure, so I still get my city fix. Many of our friends are still in the city and there are a zillion reasons to go there, especially once the weather warms up. While we have some good restaurants in the burbs (especially in Evanston & Highwood) nothing compares to the city.  Plus, living near the Metra and the invention of uber makes it super easy to go back and forth.

Also, all of this being said raising a family in the city is AMAZING. It just was never in the cards for us. We both loved growing up in the suburbs and just knew that would be home for us. I also always advise clients if they’re hoping to start a family soon, make sure you have a designated garage parking space and are comfortable with the amount of stairs you may have. You really can’t go wrong with raising a family in the city or the suburbs. Like anything in life, both have their pros and cons and you just have to do what’s best for you.

I love the north shore and plan on incorporating more NS content here. I am convinced you can have best of both worlds!