Happy Six Months Little House!

 

Yes, I was one of those weird people that kept track of ‘versarries’. Date we met, first date, etc. I get a major kick that we got married four and a half years after we started dating. To the day. It’s probably the only way numbers mean things to me. I really was never very into math. But I digress. Today marks 6 months to the day from when Bryan and I became home owners.

It was the morning of the blizzard of ’13. The day we found out the furnace was running, but the blower motor was shot, the day his parents left PA as soon as his mom got out of work at 7 am. The day we got snowed into this house with the windows not all the way shut because we couldn’t shut them from the inside and Bryan went outside in the middle of the night, middle of the blizzard to push on them while I tried to flip the locks. It was the start of the weekend where we went from blue shag, pink walls, and fuzzy wallpaper to a freshly painted (ceilings, walls, trim and subfloor) family room, guest bedroom, guest bathroom, and de papered and re-spackled (removing 3 layers of painted wallpaper removed parts of the plaster walls) half bath. It was the weekend my mother-in-law ran the carpet steamer all weekend long, cleaned all of our carpets at least two times and saved us the expense of replacing them. It was also the weekend of the ‘you’re going to pay for this’ neighbor. Read all about it here, then here, and wrap up here.

Ironically enough the same neighbor is re-cemmenting her garage floor and starting at 7 am all week there has been the glorious sound of jack hammers, big trucks, and who knows what 30 feet away from my bed. Ah well. At least I’m not getting told I’m going to pay for anything.

Looking around, it’s hard to believe what we’ve accomplished in the last six months, it’s also hard to believe what we’ve spent:

Beyond unpacking…

Our Bedroom: pretend the wallpaper is removed, because it is in real life We’ve removed the wallpaper, cleaned the carpet, buy and have installed new 8′ sliding door, added shelves to the closet, switched the ceiling light, recaulked some of the bathroom buy and hang new towel bar, hung some art, rip out 5 electric baseboards. (Admittedly not much was done to this room)

Library: hung art and photos, bought and put together ikea loveseat and chaise, rip out 5 electric baseboards, broke window (oh boy)

Kitchen: touch up the paint, bought cushions and pillows for the built-in bench, buy, move the electrical ceiling box four feet, hang a new light in the breakfast nook, patch the old lights 2′ x 2′ square hole in the ceiling (not a typo) buy and hang a new light over the table, build the table (yes, Bryan in awesome), buy and put together ikea kitchen chairs hang art, place new rug

Half Bath: strip wallpaper, remove and replace the toilet, paint walls, trim and ceiling, stencil walls, buy and add towel ring

Stairs: Remove all carpet, padding, and tack strips, fill and sand steps, paint steps and trim

Family Room: Paint ceiling, walls, floor, trim, buy ans have installed new hardwood floors, sew and hang curtains, buy and put together ikea tv stand, buy loveseat, place new rug

Guest Bedroom 1: Paint walls and trim, buy and hang art and curtains

Guest Bedroom 2: Remove wall-paper, paint walls and trim, buy bed frame, bedding, art,

Guest Bath: Paint, paint, paint. (It took three coats of white paint and primer to cover the chalky pink walls, buy floor mats, shower curtain

Art Studio: Not a blessed thing

no photo. sorry not sorry 🙂

Basement & Crawl Space: buy washer and dryer, fix both furnaces (credit from the seller), three times total, buy and have installed new water heater (credit from the seller), catch squirrel in have a heart trap

this is definitely a work in progress photo….the doors need a few more coats of paint, the window needs paint, the concrete steps and garage pad needs paint, and the front door needs to be scraped the rest of the way and painted. We do think the mint and blue garage doors will blend better, just wait and see 🙂

Outside: buy and use pressure washer, rip out 16 yards of gravel, rip out old overgrown weeds and trim back bushes, plant new plants out front, mulch the front, build raised garden bed and plant blueberry bushes, peach tree and grape-vine, paint garage doors and scrape paint on front door, fix hot tub, do a ton of electrical work (thankfully we got a credit from the seller), fix gutters, install rain barrel.

The crazy thing is we have done this conservatively, on a major budget. And waited to do a lot of it, or did it ourselves. The sliding door [the old door had a failed seal and was not insulating well], hot water heater [not up to code, inefficient] fixing both furnaces, and the electrical work [electrical panels in bathrooms? duct taped wires externally not in conduits?] were unfortunate necessaries, and things we trusted to the professionals. But we are so relieved they are fixed and working as they should. All the rest makes the house a home. And we love it.

Wow. Just writing this up has made me exhausted. That doesn’t include the hours we’ve spent at our jobs, the vacation with my family, long weekend with Bryan’s, the housewarming party, or the fact that every weekend from May 11th til September 14th had house guests, weddings, or major time fillers that didn’t let us accomplish things except 2. That’s right, 2 of 17 weekends were packed almost solid. That’s more exhausting (a good solid though, we loved having visitors and celebrating happy times with friends and family). And that’s not thinking about all there still is to do. But it is pretty cool to think of where we could be in six more months.

So, there you have it. 6 months down. Who knows how many to go. But I think it’s pretty safe to say the house won’t be changing as fast in the next 6 months. A lot of the other projects on our to-do list involve a lot more money (think bathroom and laundry room renovations), time (think lots of fiddly things like switching out the outlets and switches for ones that match), and time (like having any time to do it all when we both work, and the long list of stuff we have to do). Yes that’s right. Double time and money too.

What did you accomplish in your first 6 months of homeownership?

(Please forgive my slightly disorganized home, I realized mid post I didn’t have enough pictures already on my computer so much of the home is shown how it appears right this second, complete with rain outside, and I was not tidying up the rest of the way without more coffee, likewise for any slightly blurry photos 🙂 )

Family Room Progress

Did you have a good weekend? I did. Mostly. My two do list though was finished the curtain hemming. Didn’t finish yet and I’ll tell you why, but you will still get to see where we are in family room.

But first let’s remember where we were when we moved in:

 

I took this picture during a walk-through before all the renters stuff they left behind was removed.

We (encompassing Bryan and I, and his parents) painted the walls, took down the vertical blinds, removed the carpets and old carpet pad and tack strips, and painted the trim the first weekend we owned the house (while simultaneously painting several other rooms, removing decades of wallpaper and steam cleaning all the carpets (minus this blue one) in the house).

From the second weekend of February til now we painted the sub-floor to live with for a while as we decided which flooring option we were going to buy, we hung curtains (still aren’t hemmed, yikes!) and then eventually bit the bullet, got some gorgeous dark oak floors installed, added an area rug and still never updated the blog.

Back to the back story: While I was at work Saturday, Bryan’s co-worker dropped a dog off at our house to watch for the day, Bryan had breakfast with a good friend, and the love seat I bought off Craigslist after I wrote Friday’s post arrived. I’m typically very very leery of second-hand furniture, but this was touted as being hardly used, sold to make room for a child’s play room, from a smoke and pet free home in Mystic (ritzy street address), free delivery and we steam cleaned and disinfected it anyways.

 

It’s a warm but neutral tan, and definitely a traditional style. Which our dark gray charcoal couch is neither warm, or traditional. But somehow I knew it would work. Bryan was all for it, and then he realized new furniture means rearranging the room. Not exactly what we had planned for Saturday afternoon, but it worked and we had fun. And now we like our family room even more than we did when I wrote last week that we were pretty near satisfied.

Here is the view from the front door:

 

We tried the big gray couch all around the room before we finally settled on the back wall of the house. We plan to build a sofa table behind for glasses, some small decorations, you name it. We love this rug and really wanted a lot of it to be visible, but because we have the funky shaped couch, to have all the front legs on the rug a big portion of it would be under the couch and we wouldn’t get to see it as much. So we decided to run the first leg of the chevron strips parallel to the wood floor.

 

View from the stairs leading to the guest bedrooms. The trunk is moving to the mostly empty corner of the family room, where you can see the entire light in this photograph, I just need Bryan home from work to move it for me. The yellow leather chair isn’t staying there, but we need to fill the hole somehow.

The yellow chair might be brought back to this table, (which is the one we have on our to-do list to paint) and the other side of the table will most likely be framed with a tree of some sort. Here is where you can see the curtain length best, and unfortunately these are the ones I didn’t hem (I might just switch these panels with the ones I did hem and call it a day!

 

So there you have it.

1) hem curtains (half done) or just switch them with the hemmed curtains…. I think it’s ok to be ‘lazy’ in some aspects. 

2) sand, fill, and paint trim and door jamb (now that the door is in we have some filling, and the installation of the wood floors nicked up the trim a bit)

3) hang new fan (get rid of the shiny brass and faux wood from the seventies) see it now? yuck.

4) paint console table

5) love seat for more seating

6) new coffee table? Perhaps something light and airy. The plan now is to move the trunk to use as an end table, and perhaps get two long benches, ottoman height and reupholster them in a coordinating fabric. Then they can be split apart to use as ottomans, tables or additional seating around the room as needed.

5) art for the tall wall. Actually now we need art for behind the sofa/love seat. The paintings that are up near the tv will most likely stay, though they need to be re centered around the tv now. 

6) art for sofa/love seat wall. Something fun and a little out there. Probably not something in a frame, and an object instead.

We didn’t get as far as we wanted in our weekend to-do list because a window broke. Yes, I was just waxing eloquently about how amazing Bryan is cleaning the windows and one has broken while we were trying to fix it. Thankfully it’s an awning window that we hated much more than the old-fashioned double hung windows, but it looks like a new window is in our future. Guess it’s a good thing we cleaned the windows ourselves and saved the money, since we’ll be spending it on replacements. Such is the life of a homeowner of an older home. But in spite of it all the expenses it’s still definitely worth it. I’m thankful for a roof over my head, and the ability to fix the things we can fix. The jobs to pay for the things we can’t fix ourselves and each other. After all, it’s just a window. I’m just super thankful Bryan didn’t get all cut up when it broke. I’d much rather spend the money on a new window than have had to take him to the ER. Probably a blessing actually since I really hated those windows.

What do you think of the family room?

Adventures in Home Ownership: Our first wedding.

Back story: Bryan is a stickler to being on time. I hate being early. We strive to get everywhere exactly on time. Unfortunately I know I’m typically a bit on the late side. He loves me anyways.

Separate backstory: with our ‘welcome to the neighborhood’ card we got an invite to the neighbor across the street’s wedding.

Real Story: In the course of the last month we’ve managed to meet the neighbors that live on either side of us, and the diagonal neighbor. But even though I’ve seen the people across the street (and tried to make eye contact to make the whole wedding invitation thing less weird) I’ve never managed to even get a wave in that they’ve noticed. It seemed a bit weird to invite someone you’d never met to your wedding to be ‘neighborly’ without ever saying hi. But whatever. I tried.

Regardless Saturday was the day of the wedding. I’d put shopping for a present since I was trying to make a connection to have some idea of what to buy. No dice. I even googled their names. (You know you can do that to find wedding registries) Still nothing. So I went to Target and Homegoods and walked around. I couldn’t find anything in the movies, books, housewares, specialty food items, outdoor stuff. Nothing. I have no clue what they liked, anything. I ended up finding a candle I liked and getting to for them. Hey, after all, we haven’t even met. People do like candles right? Unless they are allergic to fragrance. It was a risk I had to take.

So, Saturday night we were getting ready. No clue what to wear since we don’t know them. Sensing a refrain here. 🙂 While I rushed to finish up I asked Bry to grab a bag and some tissue paper. Once we were all set we headed across the street. There were folding chairs for seating around the edges of the room, red and white tissue paper pompoms hanging from the ceiling. A large red heart that said something in Spanish, and a big tiered cake on the table. We were a tad bit late but there were only five people there. People slowly trickled in and an hour later (of awkwardly sitting there trying to say hi to people we didn’t know) and then the bride got there.

She had a pretty chiffon dress, but her bridesmaids were a bit ‘clubbish’ had to have been 5 or 6 inch heels, and very minimal dresses. In fact the other female guests were also similarly dressed. I totally could have worn the patterned stockings I was planning on wearing but took off as I didn’t want to offend people I didn’t know.

The ceremony was entirely in Spanish, and we stood the entire time close up to the front since there wasn’t a mic. As I was standing right behind them I’m sure I’m in the majority of the wedding pics. How weird to have a total stranger in your wedding pics. Poor couple.

Poor me, as I didn’t understand a single word that was said…and I took Spanish in high school! Strange. Anyways. People still were rolling in, and by 8 the house was totally packed, doors were propped open, and it was snowing outside. regardless, it was 80 degrees (I know since I was pretty much stuck against the wall near the thermostat). Since there was no sign of dinner anytime soon (loud music was blaring, drinks were flowing but not water which I would have loved, and the floor was packed with Salsa dancers way way beyond my beginner skills so I wasn’t joining in)we ducked out. The street was filled to the brim with cars, and people were still coming. Hard to believe the ceremony itself wasn’t that important.

It was quite the experience. It was cool to go to a wedding that was different that the ones that most people I interact with would have. It was definitely an eye-opener to another culture. But glad my wedding wasn’t that way. I kind of felt like a wedding-crasher, and that was strange. Hopefully, never again! And hopefully the neighbors liked the candle!

Am I the only one that’s been invited to a wedding where neither me or my date knew the bride, groom, or parents? Anyone ever have no luck finding a gift they know the couple would like? Would you have given a gift to couple you didn’t know?

I Always Seem To…

do crazy things in big storms. Hurricane Sandy? Drove the one and only Abby to Nashville.

Winter Storm Nemo/Blizzard Charlotte? Bought a house. Oh, but it wasn’t nearly as easy at that made it sound. Let’s start by pretending there wasn’t a title issue, furnace issue, or an impending blizzard during the last week before we bought a house. Let’s pretend there was no stress involved with packing, getting ready to move Saturday, or if my in-laws would make it to Ct, or get stranded somewhere along the way. Because it was going to get a lot worse before it got better.

So, it’s Friday morning and we excitedly get up, and go to the house for the final walk-through there’s about an inch of snow on the ground. Everything looks great. We excitedly/nervously head to the lawyer’s office to sign papers. There are three inches of snow on the ground. We shake hands all around and get to reviewing the HUD. On the HUD the seller’s contribution to closing is off by 4,000 dollars. (Originally we had asked for closing assistance to the tune of 4,000, then after the inspection rather than fix some items the sellers offered another credit towards closing. The addendum apparently confused the highly educated lawyers so they changed the seller’s contribution to only the repair money.)

Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, just a simple call to the mortgage company to get things squared away. (Luckily our loan originator had already run the numbers and worked out it was ok for the sellers to do that) However, now it was 11:30 and the offices were closing at 12:15 because of the massive blizzard that was pounding the shoreline of Ct. The lawyers called and were told the closing wasn’t happening today, and it wouldn’t even happen Monday. I couldn’t help but think that all of our things, including clothes we would need for the next week were already packed. I could not even comprehend this not working out today, and having to go home and unpack things to make it another week while all the dumb paperwork got sorted out. (Don’t read this as my realtor slacking, she called repeatedly trying to see the HUD so she could double-check the numbers and the lawyer’s office was behind and couldn’t get them to her. Lesson: never use this office again)

I valiantly (it was a major effort) stayed tearless, even though I wanted to burst into tears, especially since my in-laws, rather than risk getting stuck in the snow had left as soon as my mother-in-law got off work (night nurse) and were already in our rental. And I’d worked my tail off the last two weeks packing everything, and just that morning had packed up the rest of our clothes/kitchen necessities, so we could move straight into our new house, and stop parking on the street, or living under a very loud bachelor. Our goal had literally been to be out of the rental before we had to shovel our car out of the plowed in shoulder again. (this is blatant foreshadowing!)

My champion realtor got on the phone and called our loan guy. He started working on his end, and to hear him tell it, got the entire office in New Britain working on our mortgage to push it through before they closed. We narrowly got the approval and signed ALL of the papers in ten minutes (thanking the Lord all the while that it was working out, and that our realtor reviewed the papers with us prior to the closing so we knew what we were signing). I couldn’t believe it. We were actually purchasing a house. The thought I expected to have while siting around this table were more about ‘I can’t believe we are doing this!”, “this feels like a bigger commitment than getting married!” (really it did, my marriage is for keeps, we both know that, and we both work towards that, the house? It’s totally a one-sided thing, it’s scarier! Though now, it’s definitely not scary, we are old pros now, two weeks and all that 🙂 )

Next it was back to the rental to pick up Bry’s parents and our supplies before heading on to the house. Our house! Unbelievable. The roads were already bad, we slid past our (new) road in attempt to stop and had to pull a U-ie (spell check!) to get down the road. Instead of the 1-2 inches we had been told to expect by all of the weather sources,  we had 4+ inches and it wasn’t slowing down. The drive was a bit scary with cars slipping all over the place and the sky eerily dark (at 1PM!)

Mid Afternoon Friday (snow still falling) looking into our backyard

The original plan was to paint the family room (pinkish walls and wooden ceiling/one wall) and paint the guest bedroom. Clean the house. Move our belongings in on Saturday and be completely out of the rental. With 4-5 inches falling every hour during the worst of the storm, and winds at 60 mph, the roads were legally shut at 4 o’clock, and after the scary drive around 1 there was no way we were leaving the house Friday.

Hence the end of our carefully laden plans, and getting thrown headfirst into God’s plan for the weekend, which was infinitely better.

Blog absence

Hello all, just want to apologies for my woeful lack of posts in the last two weeks. In between the drama of pre-closing, the impending blizzard, moving, no working Internet at the house (typing long entries on a cell phone just is too time consuming especially when ones house is filled to the brim with boxes), work, and trying to find some time to relax with my husband as well I’m sure you can understand my long silence. Rest assured my new modem is coming either tonight or tomorrow and shortly there after there will be blog posts galore 🙂 hope you all are well!
How long did it take you to settle back into life with boxes unpacked after your last move?

My kitchen will look nice! I’m determined

Reasons this week is a great one.

It’s 7:00 am on a Tuesday morning. The fans and ceiling light fixtures are shaking as I walk into the kitchen to get my coffee. That’s because the upstairs neighbor is working out again.  Along with the shaking lights the thudding thumping bass is perfect medicine for the killer migraine I’ve had all night. Thankfully the ibuprofen and the coffeepot are some of the few things not packed up. And that reminds me what makes this week a great one, even if my day starts out with music from upstairs so loud I feel like if I knew the words I’d be comfortable enough to sing along. Because this week we move, into our very own home.

Both our car and our scooters get to park in a garage (No more parking on the street.)  No more throwing money away (though I’m sure we will feel like we are spending money on the house non-stop). We will have two guestrooms, and none of them will be entered by walking through the the master!

Don’t get me wrong our new house has it’s own set of quirks, but it’s ours.

In other good news the packing is coming along great. The basement is done, the guest bedroom, front room (with all the books), the dinning room (and all the china), the kitchen (a few plates, glasses, silverware, and pans are left out), the master bedroom (just the bedding is left), the bathroom, and some miscellaneous decorations.

It’s definitely been hectic and crazy busy, and there are so many boxes in my front room it’s reminiscent to the first week in this house after we were married, but at least this time things are clearly labelled and I have an idea of what’s what!

Bryan’s parents are coming up this weekend to help us move, get some painting done and clean up the house. It will be nice to have the company and show some loved ones our house, as not very many people have seen it.

I have big plans to take before and after pics so all of you back home have a general idea of what our house is like, since it’s not really feasible to have a housewarming party 🙂

Oh bliss, the upstairs neighbor left for work, now in the silence I can watch the snow fall and finish my coffee. Have a blessed day!

i’m packing up packing up…

I’ve been busy packing up our not so necessary belongings for the past couple days since we will be moving before we know it (11 days is closing!). As I’ve been packing I’ve had this hilarious song stuck in my head except instead of the actual words, I’ve got a parody going, of the chorus over and over, but it doesn’t drive me crazy because it brings back senior year college memories when my roommate Kelsey would get such a kick out of these ‘songs’. You know what I’m talking about? When youtube movie makers take ‘funny’ or interesting video clips and turn the news clip into a music video? This particular song seemed to be quite the internet sensation, at least with college students. It was based on this older lady who had been getting coffee when two robbers have a stick up in the convenience store.

This appears to be the actual interview…

anyways, here is the ‘music video’ of the interview… H-e-l-l is repeated a couple of times, but with the ‘music’ it isn’t super noticeable, just a fair warning

here’s a spoof

Now back to the point of this blog post. I’m walking around my house packing up packing up packing up cuz my daddy taught me good. I’m packing the heck out of here cuz I’m so excited we are moving out of here!

hope the crazy lady and visions of me packing like a crazy person brought a smile to your monday afternoon 🙂
Have any crazy YouTube movies to share with this procrastinator?
hero of the day saved my life….packing tape 🙂

_____ Days of Winter

The days of winter are getting a bit stale, I’m starting to get a touch of cabin fever I think. We have approximately 17 days (I’ve heard closing can sometimes get pushed back) before we start moving and fixing up the new house so I’m a bit hesitant to paint any new pictures or start any new sewing projects because I know once life gets in the way it’ll be hard to finish them. And once our new house is ‘ours’ you know we will have millions of projects to do and not enough time to do them. So I’m doing my best to enjoy this ‘calm’ before the storm.

The nights and weekends of winter are getting a bit empty, with cold temps and winter weather there aren’t nearly as many activities to do around here as in the summer, and I can only watch so many TV shows (through Netflix or online) before my brain rebels.  I can’t miss Downton Abbey (can you believe what happened in episode 3?) or Top Chef (who went home!?!?), but I might only be able to make it through two shows before I have to do something else! The winter temps are always worth it when there is a fresh dusting of snow on the ground, and since the New Year began we have already had three decent snows that don’t disappear the next day!

The days of winter are starting to get a bit exploratory, the kitchen is the one room I can start projects in that aren’t going to last until we move. Things like homemade Greek yogurt, artisan bread, and attempted gourmet cooking is where my creative pursuits are going. Bryan is loving it and is starting to mention ‘underground’ or pop-up restaurant ideas to me. (Basically it’s ‘restaurants’ people go to in homes, I read about it a lot in London, and apparently he thinks I could swing it. After watching every Top Chef episode over the last 10 seasons, the idea of a ‘restaurant’ is a bit scary. (go figure!) It is an interesting and flattering concept though. Maybe someday…who knows!

The days of winter are getting a bit restrained, since I’m on a house-buying budget there really isn’t a whole lot of sense in wandering the mall or Home Goods, though I will sometimes roam Home Goods, because it reminds me of funny trips with mom. But then I see the ‘perfect’ something that would look so great somewhere in our new house, so I’ll stick it in my cart and wander the rest of the store before deciding I really didn’t need it yet, we don’t have the house!. It has been giving me great ideas for different areas, so even though I’m not spending anything there right now I probably go once a week to check things out anyways.

The days of winter are getting anticipatory, Pinterest and design blogs are great and all, but finding so many great ideas and not being able to do anything about it is like being told you can’t have the delicious, fresh-out-of-the-oven cookies until after dinner. And so I pin and pine away, but am sitting on my hands exercising my patience, or not-so patient self. Bryan and I have had a lot of fun wandering furniture stores, in the same bent as Home Goods, it’s all look but don’t buy, but the imagining our future home is really fun. We can’t wait and know we are so blessed.

So life is filled with ups and downs of a million emotions, and even though I can’t wait until we are homeowners, I’m enjoying the last few days we have where if something goes wrong we don’t have to pay to fix it! Haha.

How are your days of winter treating you? Do you have a countdown til spring? 🙂

 

 

Open and Close.

Hooray hooray hooray!!! We have a closing date 🙂 February 8th we will be homeowners. Lord willing we won’t have any delays, but we’ve gotten pretty good at dealing with the punches. So, that’s the most exciting thing in our lives right about now. Thankfully we will be both close to work which equals a short commute and a new chapter of our lives. We’ve been planning for this for a while, it’s been seven months of actively pursuing a home of our own and it’s amazing the hard work will be paying off in such a very short time.

What’s going on with you?

Letting it Go:

Many of you have heard either via this blog, or via Facebook that we are moving into our new house within the month. And to prepare for moving out we have to not only keep our rental house in a landlord/prospective renter state, we(I) have decided enough is enough and we need to let some stuff go. After all, we didn’t like seeing junk laying around when we were out house-hunting, and no potential renters are going to want to see that either! Namely a large collection of boxes of childhood things that Bry has kept for years, hasn’t looked at them ages. These were boxes that were haphazardly packed by the movers (dumped everything in unceremoniously with little thought to actually fitting as much as possible in the boxes) and filled with who knows what.

So two nights ago we descended into the dark poorly lit basement to give some semblance of order to the ‘office’ space down there as well as get rid of things that we junk. A tally of some sort would have probably been entertaining, but suffice it to say that we threw away over 25 non-working pens, boxes that old cellphones, external hard drives, and other electronics came in. We re-sorted things into the desk drawers (which are really file cabinets handed down to us by my parents) and carried out a large moving box that I could have fit into sitting down filled to the brim with old papers, and junk.

Next we tackled the rest of the basement putting like with like and while the basement is not finished, and as Bryan says, is allowed to look like storage, it doesn’t give me heart palpitations from knowing that there is a lot of stuff we just need to let go off and have a clean slate.

It wasn’t all trash though we came up with 4 boxes of things that we could donate (granted most of it we had sorted earlier), things like really cheap college leftovers: random assortments of kitchen supplies, some old books, and even our closets were pared down.

We certainly didn’t make a big enough dent that we wouldn’t need a U-haul to move, but at least we don’t have the knowledge that there are some boxes we haven’t even looked at since we moved and who knows what we are hauling around.

Trust me, it feels great to let it go, even if it means you spent 3 hours in a poorly lit, spidery basement. Have you made a run to your local thrift store to donate recently? Or start small, gone through your pens/markers/highlighters? I bet there are some duds.