Here’s some reasons why we are happy with our decision to move to the suburbs of Chicago after over 10 years of living in the city, three of those years in the West Loop. It was a controversial decision, especially among our friends who are long-time city dwellers, but one we didn’t make lightly.

Here’s why we love our little house in the suburbs:

1. It’s quiet.
2. There’s no traffic.
3. There are animals in our yard that we watch daily. We even love the squirrels, although everyone hates them.
4. We have trees with leaves and green grass instead of cold concrete and steel.
5. The amount of money we spent on our four-bedroom house with a yard, basement and garage would have gotten us a one-bedroom condo maybe with a parking space, (if we were super lucky) in the city. So, economical!
6. Any kind of shopping we need to do, it’s available and closeby, and we don’t pay for parking.
7. That’s a big one – not paying for parking. When I worked in the gold coast, I was paying $24/day for parking. (and there was no public transportation available from where I was living that wouldn’t have taken two hours).
8. We can go to the movies and not pay for parking (See, I told you it was big)
9. We’ve never lived in the suburbs, it’s new and different.
10. Neighbors – never ever talked to our neighbors in the city. We felt inferior because we were renters. Now we have funny neighbor stories almost weekly!
11. We can do whatever we want to our house without a bossy landlord to tell us no, you can’t paint the walls.
12. No elephant-footed upstairs neighbors, or loud, stereo-with-God-awful-music playing.
13. No people “holding” parking spaces on the street with lawn chairs and sawhorses after it snows.
14. Now our formerly-wasted rent money is going towards our mortgaged future, instead of down the toilet each month.
15. Squirrels are better than pigeons.

All good, important reasons, I think.