DH and I moved at the beginning of the year. A little background, we moved from a 2600 sq ft house with three car garage in CA with 2 weeks notice 3 years ago. needless to say, we didn't have time to get rid of a lot of stuff in that amount of time. we rented a house that was 1800 sq ft, with a large unfinished basement in addition to that, and 2 car garage. It housed our stuff perfectly.
Last year, we decided to move to a cheaper place to save money. That meant "smaller". It took me a while to find a place within the area we wanted to live in our new price range. in the mean time, we got rid of a lot of stuff. I mean A LOT of stuff. DH thought I was a hoarder, but my thought was if it's been in the basement the last two years and we haven't touched it, it's gone! I actually sold a lot of stuff on Craigslist and made a couple hundred dollars. we found a 1200 sq ft condo with a BIG 2 car garage right where we wanted to live. Maybe we're lucky, as we've been here 9 months now and it's really quiet - we don't hear anything more than people outside like we would hear on a regular residential street. The design of these condos is great, though, as the garages are all on the first floor, with ranch style condos above them. Our "joint" walls are the kitchen, bathrooms, and laundry room, so we don't hear anything.
At any rate, it was refreshing to get rid of so much stuff. the only thing we miss, as stated by another person, is having to get dressed to take the dog out. By the way, we have 2 cats and a golden retriever and we all fit fine here. But we don't spend a lot of time inside the house anyhow.