Advice on moving away from the city but still commuting?

[Anonymous]

OP here - someone asked what my obsession with bristow or dumfries was...honestly, I don't know much just that I'm from a small hole in the wall in WV and to me bristow kind of seemed the same way. Some people are not meant for the city, I am one of those people. I don't care about the things that people around here care about. For example, I don't care if my kid goes to private school..where I come from we have no private school!! To me the simple things in life matter. I probably didn't get the education most people around here had if that makes sense...I'm perfectly fine & happy. Plus, in alexandria you can't take a day off school to go deer hunting I thought everyone in the world did that!! LOL!

[Anonymous]

Bristle, while not Arlington/Alexandria will also not be your hole in the wall WVa town, it's suburbia. Big box stores, long commutes, lots of chains. It's not a small, quaint town/village.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here - someone asked what my obsession with bristow or dumfries was...honestly, I don't know much just that I'm from a small hole in the wall in WV and to me bristow kind of seemed the same way. Some people are not meant for the city, I am one of those people. I don't care about the things that people around here care about. For example, I don't care if my kid goes to private school..where I come from we have no private school!! To me the simple things in life matter. I probably didn't get the education most people around here had if that makes sense...I'm perfectly fine & happy. Plus, in alexandria you can't take a day off school to go deer hunting I thought everyone in the world did that!! LOL!

I'm a previous poster from way earlier in the thread, that is from Bristow.

Are you looking for "small hole in the wall" or are you looking for suburbia. Most of Bristow is planned communities, with sidewalks, close together homes (houses on about 1/4 acre or so), community pools/playgrounds, etc. We have 2 Super Targets nearby, most moms I know stay home, most families I know have at least 3 kids and almost every household has a minivan.

If you're looking for more of the type of place where you have more land, no sidewalks, "out in the country" atmosphere, maybe look in Nokesville or Brentsville.

[Anonymous]

I would think very hard about a long commute. If your children are young then you have no idea about school mtgs, kids activities, and yes, even homework! I am pretty smart I think with a few degrees but my husband is stronger in some areas. For example, I had to keep one child up until 9pm for dad (long day at office not the commute but still) to do an advanced algebra problem that I could not figure out . You might be a long way from this point but you need to think about these things before a 30 yr mortgage.

I am from a very small town. lived in dc after grad school. Married and moved to Fairfax city area and boy does it feel small town. I work pt from home but the rest of the time I do a 4 mile loop to the schools, church, stores, gym, activites and see THE SAME PEOPLE everyhwhere - just like growing up. I even know the kids teachers as many live in the nearby neighborhoods ( just like my small town with a k-12 school). I probably have 8-10 people I could call at anytime to help me with an emergency.

So, my pint is, I do understand, but I think you can find a small town vibe of connectedness without moving so far. We almost bought in hay market when we were "astounded" by the beautiful homes friends. And colleagues were getting compared to what we paid "close in" but years later ....houses under water ( the ones far out tend to lose value first - at least according to wapo), divorces, and extremely high gas at times. We think we are far out in Fairfax! However, dh has been at pentagon, tyson's, Arlington, now sterling so this has proved an ideal location.

Hope this helps. Please think this through. Commuting is hell!

[Anonymous]

I live in Falls Church city and while not quaint and charming, it does have a small town feel. On the weekends we are just hanging out, it's so easy to say in our 2 mile radius. I'm from a small town too, where you couldn't go to the grocery store or a restaurant without seeing someone you know, I hated it here when I first ,over here 5 years ago. But, slowly, I've made a sense of community and small town vibe in my little area. We see the same people at the farmers market, restaurants, etc. Around here, unless you go waaaay out, you are just not going to get what you left behind. It'll get better!

[Anonymous]

I have a friend - SAHM - her husband commutes from Lansdowne in Leesburg to Arlington/DC - depending which office. He doesn't get home until after 7 generally.

Depending where you are, there are VRE stations. I know there is one in Burke but I think Manassas is the end of the line. At least that would give you time to yourself if you did park & ride vs sitting in gridlock and getting pissed off at traffic thus arriving home pissed off. Even with park & ride to the Vienna metro, you would have a lengthy commute. Keep in mind that the DullesMetrorail project that is currently underway so in a couple years, you can pick up metro in Loudoun county just west of the airport. A benefit if you settle in Purcellville or that area.

There's also the MARC but I hear it frequently runs late and to pick it up at Point of Rocks or farther west then to go through Gaithersburg/down the 270 corridor, seems like an awful long ride to me.

I have also known people to live as far away as CharlesTown WV and commute to Tysons - they didn't have kids though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know people who live that far out. The key is to commute in a way that lets you relax or work during the commute: train or bus works well, but driving doesn't. My friends all take laptops with them and get a lot of work done while they're commuting. They say it works really well for them because they can take the train or bus, but if they had to drive that kind of distance, they'd want to kill themselves.

Well put. Of course, it's also worth noting that OP's DH would never see her or the kids--just as PP pointed out.

[Anonymous]

OP, have you thought about Anne Arundel County in MD? There are many places in Southern AA Co that will remind you of home. Depending on where your DH works, he could drive to the end of the green or blue line and metro in.

[ThatSmileyFaceGuy]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know people who live that far out. The key is to commute in a way that lets you relax or work during the commute: train or bus works well, but driving doesn't. My friends all take laptops with them and get a lot of work done while they're commuting. They say it works really well for them because they can take the train or bus, but if they had to drive that kind of distance, they'd want to kill themselves.

Well put. Of course, it's also worth noting that OP's DH would never see her or the kids--just as PP pointed out.

This isn't always the truth, I posted earlier about my 1.5 hour commute but I have my workday arranged so that it starts at 6am and ends at 3:30 (I work the 9/80 AWS) that gets me home not much after 5. It all comes down to what you are willing to do to get what you want.

[Anonymous]

OP--There are places in both MD and VA where you can take a commuter train or commuter bus downtown. There are plenty of haters who are telling you what a terrible idea this commute will be, but I believe that if you can walk to the bus/train/VRE/MARC train station and then from the station to your office downtown, it wont be bad at all. When I lived in DC it took me 30 minutes to get from my home in DC to my office in DC--walking to the metro, waiting for the train, taking the train, etc. It has also taken me 45+ plus to get from Arlington to DC--waiting for the bus, transferring from bus to metro, changing lines, etc. IMHO its the changing trains/forms of transportation that sucks your soul. That and driving on the Beltway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP--There are places in both MD and VA where you can take a commuter train or commuter bus downtown. There are plenty of haters who are telling you what a terrible idea this commute will be, but I believe that if you can walk to the bus/train/VRE/MARC train station and then from the station to your office downtown, it wont be bad at all. When I lived in DC it took me 30 minutes to get from my home in DC to my office in DC--walking to the metro, waiting for the train, taking the train, etc. It has also taken me 45+ plus to get from Arlington to DC--waiting for the bus, transferring from bus to metro, changing lines, etc. IMHO its the changing trains/forms of transportation that sucks your soul. That and driving on the Beltway.

I completely agree with this! My office is within walking distance of Union Station. I live in Falls Church, and take the metro from WFC. I'm about 1.5 miles to the metro, and I drive and park at WFC. My door to door commute is just under an hour. Drive to parking lot, walk to train, wait for train, 25 minutes to Metro Center (on a normal day), then switch trains (often waiting 3-5 minutes for the red line), 5 minutes to Union Station, then a 10 minute walk to the office. I have work colleagues that take VRE and Marc, and live way outside the Beltway, and have shorter commutes! It really depends on where you live and where you work.

[Anonymous]

I live in Bristow, and I personally could not do the commute on a long-term basis unless I had a spouse who did not work (and even then it would still be hard). I commuted from here to Falls Church for a long time, and even that was soul-crushing at times, depending on traffic and it was just outside the Beltway. It was NEVER shorter than 45 minutes and took up to an hour and a half or even, once when there was a bad accident, two hours. I was so frustrated I wanted to cry.

I have also done the commute from out here to DC, and even on the train it SUCKED. I commuted from Manassas Park (lived less than 5 min from the VRE stop there) but had to take metro and then bus or walk to the office. It was 1.5 hours each way. I ended up getting asked to leave a job because I had no flexibility to stay later because of picking up a child from day care and how early I had to leave the office to make the train to pick him up by 6:30. And then train delays could make me late even still. It is a serious commute. From Bristow, I took one (temp) job in DC for two months and granted I was 5 months pregnant at the time but damn, it near about killed me by the end of it. I got up at 5:30, left the house at 6, drove to Vienna metro, took the metro in, and since we had to take a total of one hour of breaks during the day, I could not even work a full 8 hours or I couldn't be on time to pick up my kids by 6 p.m. And OMG, the stress of trying to time everything right so that I wasn't late to pick them up! The absolute helplessness and frustration and at times rage you feel when traffic is backed up or there is a Metro delay that is going to make you late ... never again. I am now a SAHM, my DH works in Leesburg (which is a north-south commute on a not very heavily trafficked road, so not that bad). That's the only reason we can live here.

Now, that having been said about the commute, suburbia agrees with me just fine. It is much less densely populated out here than Alexandria, DC, Arlington, even Fairfax County. I am 3 minutes away from horse farms and cornfields, and I LOVE that. Yeah, big box stores, cookie cutter cheap new construction planned communities, etc., but the breathing room is key for me. I can run errands on the weekends without insane traffic. Any chance of getting jobs somewhere in NoVa? If not, I would say stay put. The commute is killer over time, even on the train, because of the feeling of being away from your kids and spouse so much. There are only so many books you can read (and I did enjoy that for a while) before you realize you'd rather be with your family.

[Anonymous]

OP, get your spouse to change his job. That way you can have rural living and the commute to his job will be less.
There are plenty of jobs outside of DC
What does he do?

[Anonymous]

A day off school to go deer hunting? For real?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, have you thought about Anne Arundel County in MD? There are many places in Southern AA Co that will remind you of home. Depending on where your DH works, he could drive to the end of the green or blue line and metro in.

We moved from Chevy Chase, DC to Davidsonville in Southern Anne Arundel County in May. People in Chevy Chase were all shocked. They could not believe that we would give up the CC lifestyle to come out here. We had a decent house by DC standards - 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom row house. But it was really tight for our family. My kids were in Murch which is considered a "good" DC public school, although the school did not seem all that fantastic to me and certainly is not now in comparison to our excellent public school here.

We debated moving for years due to the commuter issue since my husband and I both work in downtown DC. When we finally did it, it was because we found an ideal house with lots of land and horses nearby in a pretty rural setting. A huge change from DC, but also a big improvement in terms of comfort and freedom for my boys to just run around and play and enjoy being kids.

Fortunately for me, I get to work from home 3-4 days per week, so its not so bad. I take a commuter bus and just read or do work on the bus. Its 1 hour door to door and the time goes by quickly because I am busy on the bus. My husband drives to K street every day. I wouldn't really want to drive, but he doesn't seem to mind it yet. Driving takes him just under an hour in rush hour and it took him 45 minutes to get down Connecticut Ave from our old house at 8:30 in the morning so its all ok.

I guess that this rambling post is just to say that I've now experienced both the city and a more rural place and I can say that people can and do survive moving out of DC. And no, I do not subsist on chain restaurants and walmart.