"Where would we store a stroller?"

It's interesting - and very personal - the questions that you ask yourself when buying a house. I'm fortunate in that I have someone to buy a house with, so we can bounce questions off each other; come up with worst-case scenarios involving family and friends coming over; and help point out smaller details the other may have missed. We're a good team but on the weekend this question came up:

"Where would we store a stroller?"

It seemed innocuous at first, but once we actually thought about it, it became much bigger. Wherever we move, we want to be able to fit a couple of kids in too and kids come with lots of extras, like toys and clothes and diapers - and strollers.

Before we started house-hunting we answered the "big" questions: what neighbourhood; how many bedrooms; could we make it work with one bathroom; parking is a must; easy TTC access is a must; we don't want to be house-rich and cash-poor so figure out our max limit and try to come in below it; we'd rather not go north of St Clair; we'd like to stay put for at least five years and maybe even up to 10. We had it figured out - until I brought up the stroller.

And that's the trickiest part of the house-buying process (at least for us [at least according to me]): not just how we're going to use it now but how we're going to use it later. 10 years is a long time, especially when buying with our budget but we'd talked about it and knew what we needed, what we wanted and what we could compromise on. But don't forget the stroller.

We're still looking - it has been barely a month after all. But we're pretty sure we've got all the answers we need now, both big and
small, and we'll make sure there is room for a stroller.