When our family moved from the United States to The Netherlands a year and a half ago, we moved to a country we had never visited and to a culture we only knew secondhand. We expected things would be different. We believed things would be better. We could only wonder how much we would miss.

Of course we miss our family and friends, but thanks to the video calling we stay in touch pretty well. Here is a round up of other aspects we miss or don't miss about living in the United States. I wonder if you’ll be surprised?

What We Miss

Food

If you’ve ever made a cross-cultural move, you already knew this would make the list. Although it seems a trivial issue, the absence of certain ingredients or food experiences is something we won't stop missing anytime soon. We miss American bacon, breakfast sausage, hot dogs. We tend to cook a lot of Mexican-American food, but certain salsas, spices and all corn tortillas are missing from the grocery store shelves. I love to bake, but in The Netherlands it’s hard to find the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies, fudge or pumpkin pie. The best solution? Plan ahead and order certain ingredients online.

No canned pumpkin or evaporated milk here! I had to make both the old fashioned way for my Thanksgiving pumpkin pie.

Home Improvement Stores

American hardware stores are gigantic and the selection is fantastic! At my Dutch hardware store, there might be 5-6 choices when it comes to laminate floors. It’s like that in every section - quite limited choices. It makes me laugh because in America not only is the home improvement store huge, it’s probably across the street from another home improvement store, in case you still didn’t find the perfect tile for your kitchen backsplash.

Backpacking + Camping

America is a beautiful country with diverse and abundant nature. My family misses the mountains and our favorite things to do in the mountains - backpack or camp. We’d have to travel outside The Netherlands for such an adventure. Someday, I’m sure we’ll be able to do just that. For now, we miss the easy accessibility of these affordable family excursians.

Hiking in the North Carolina mountains, 2018

Ocean

Oh, the ocean! That’s probably what I miss most. I love, love, love a warm, sandy beach with kids and buckets and shovels in tough. South Carolina had some great beaches and we made lots of family memories there (camping, in fact!). Our family has not yet visited the Dutch seashore. I’d like too, but covid made that hard this last summer, plus the fact that it’s rarely swimming weather is discouraging. The beaches here are more windy than sunny. I guess, I’m a little nervous to even try, for fear of the disappointment.

Home

What is home? It’s hard to describe. My family is here, so truly I am home, but there’s something missing. When I arrive back to my house or make a pot of tea in the morning or welcome a few friends over, it feels like a place we are living, not our home.

We had created such an amazing home in the United States. How can we do that again here, but in a completely different environment and with different resources? I’ve been pondering this for some time and had these questions in mind when we were shopping for a home this summer/fall. I’m really looking forward to putting some ideas into action when we move into our new house this March.

What We Don’t Miss

Owning Cars

Not having to own a car? It’s awesome! Even though we can acknowledge that there are times when owning a car would be more convenient, we don’t miss the hassle one bit. It’s good to use our legs, save a ton of money and be good to the earth as well.

grocery shopping by bike, with cargo trailer

English language

It’s true - in The Netherlands you don’t have to miss the English language, because it’s on offer virtually everywhere. That said, I’m finding that learning Dutch is more doable than I imagined and actually enjoyable. I was worried that it would be hard to make friends, due to the language barrier. Instead, I find myself not missing living in an English-language dominant world one bit.

Same for the kids! Liam (13) was not at all interested in learning a new language. He reports that it was easier than he expected.

Homeschooling

Ah, yes. If you’ve been around Stitched in Color, you’ll know that I homeschooled Aria and Liam for many, many years. I am convinced that those will remain some of the most precious years of my life. We had a great time together and they flourished.

Time marches on. Aria and Liam are teenagers now, and we were all ready for a change. They’re doing great in Dutch schools, which are certainly higher quality than the public schools available to them in South Carolina. They have fond memories of homeschooling too, but they are now looking to the future.

I would have loved to recreate that homeschooling culture with Elora, but with only one child it would never have been the same. Homeschooling was great! But, so is what we’ve got here.

Bulk Shopping

The other day I was chatting with an American friend, who was on her way to Costco. She assumed I missed the convenience of shopping in bulk, but I’ll honestly report that we don’t. We haven’t seen any big shopping stores in The Netherlands. They don’t make a lot of sense given that kitchens, hallways, bathrooms, etc. all have far less storage than in the United States.

our compact Dutch kitchen, 2020 (that’s the fridge under the microwave)

We used to be a family that grocery shopped only once per week and made the occasional trip to Costco. Now we grocery shop 3+ times per week. Sounds inconvenient, but with the grocery store just 3 minutes away by bike, it doesn’t eat up much time. We use a shopping list app that anyone in our family can add things too. Thus, when you’re out of X you can either pop down to the store yourself (even if you’re 13 years old!) or put it on the app and know it’ll be “back in stock” within a day or two.

With frequent shopping everything fits in a miniature Dutch-style fridge and I believe we do waste less food as we never stock up.

Smaller House

And that brings me to the last thing we worried we’d miss - having a big, American house! Making this move has proved that it’s all about perspective and cultural expectations. Every room in our house is smaller than it’s equivalent in the US, but it’s totally normal here to live small and to really use all of your spaces. Around Thanksgiving we tried to explain to a Dutch friend how Americans typically use their extra living rooms and formal dining rooms only for holidays. It was, to them, an odd concept.

Anyways, our new house come March is a smidge larger than this one, but that’s just a drop in the bucket compared to our old American house. I’m glad to say that we’ve adjusted and all gotten used to smaller spaces. It’s a shift I wanted to bequeath to my children, so that they wouldn’t automatically want a large house of their own someday.

I can say without equivocation, that we have absolutely no regrets about our big move. My husband, my kids and I are so thankful we could come to The Netherlands. It has not disappointed us in the least!

one year anniversary of arrival in The Netherlands!

We do miss some things about the U.S. I hope we can visit someday and show Elora the beaches and mountains and food of her heritage! Though we’ll probably skip the home improvement stores, haha.

So tell me, where you surprised by anything on my list?

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