After a really treacherous week, culminating in a bizarre week-end (dealing w my 9yo daughter), I think I made some progress this week-end.
Last week: Do not let anything else fool you. I am still in survival and recovery mode at the moment. There is still …half a household to sort and unpack yet. I am doing a little tiny bit every day, most days. It is a slow integration process. It’s not just that I pushed myself so hard during the moving part…because overall there were only a couple days when I pushed myself physically … this is mostly a mental …malaise…that whole this is my best friend and I promised never ever to move back in w him again…and here I am again…although as R keeps pointing out, circumstances have vastly altered this time around. We aren’t just best friends any more…we are so much more…and I am not a room-mate this time. I am a spouse/mate/partner…this is not ‘his’ house; it is ‘our’ house…and we will make it our home…that’s sort of the issue I am having at the moment. That whole how do I get over my own issues where he is concerned and turn this place into our place, without disrupting all of his stuff…even though he wants me to disrupt his stuff…
I had a very interesting experience last week…I’ve been rather vocal about the paring down of my wardrobe. R has alternated between teasing me to get rid of more clothes to fit the space we have and the suggestion of building me more closet space…well, I took him at his teasing one day. I went through every single item of clothing I own and ruthlessly sorted and purged things out. It was not the easiest thing I have ever done. When I started the process I was sort of ok with things, and sort of resentful…and as I continued, I questioned everything, including if I was doing this for me or for R…I questioned if I should do it. So much time and money and effort had gone into every single item of clothing…not just in the buying of them, but in the transport of them…I filled another two 33 gallon bags, and another four 13 gallon bags, with another 13 gallon bag only half full full of nothing but clothing…and I am thinking there are still things in the basement that I didn’t find yet that I need to go through.
No one who has lived w me or who has seen my closets in the past twenty years will believe that R and I now share a closet…and he has the larger half…and all my clothes (except winter coats of course…and my maternity clothes) fit in that one closet…my other clothes all fit in the dressers…sweaters will be going in the closet…it all fits…period.
What you may not realize is two months ago now I had three closets, two chest of drawers, three small dressers, and who knows what else tucked into odd places…and now I have half a closet, my side of the dresser, and my side of the drawers under the bed and my part of the shelf in the closet…it’s a very different experience.
I did finally manage to get my jeans down to 20 pairs…and I think maybe even less than that. I got rid of nearly all the slacks I owned because I hadn’t worn them in so long. I even tossed out more sweaters…so I am actually down to under 20 sweaters—and this includes cardigans, which can tend to be my weakness.
I cannot tell you how long it has been since I have been able to have all four seasons of clothing in one room…and the clothes not be in boxes or in bags for storage during a move…although at first I was quite upset…afterwards the catharsis set in and I felt better and better. I really like this. The longer it goes on, the better I actually feel. That’s…strange…and interesting…all at the same time.
R started teasing me immediately about the next shopping trip, when I will refill the shelves and the hangers, but I really do not think so. I think I am good. I grow more sure of that every day.
We had some interesting talks this week too. Not only are we planning to build a linen closet into the empty space above our basement stairs, but we are also thinking of building at least one room downstairs, if not more…because the idea has been thrown out to have one room for the books and another room as an extra bedroom…we’ll have to see about that yet. We’ve also talked about opening up the dining room to add a door to the outside and building a patio out into the backyard. That is kind of thrilling…for me, it means more landscaping…not that I have even really started the landscaping projects around here yet…but I am planning, which means something. Rose garden here we come…
This week-end, however, we were discussing the possibility of building onto the house…and other than the patio into the backyard, there’s not a great deal of room to build out, but there is room to build up. This is the omg we just moved and I do NOT want to move again person talking here…both R and I are at the point in our lives where we actually need more land and less neighbors…but we are also willing to do a couple things about that…#1 like buying a vacation property elsewhere (we already know we are buying property in CO) and #2 like buying land here and building on it, or buying the big house w land and slowly moving into it…or chucking it all in and paying someone to pack and load and move and unload everything…at this point, we are both more leaning towards that option…
We also started our family planning discussions this week-end, though they were greatly curtailed by my 9yo and her actions (more on that later)…seems ‘space’ is one of those issues that we will have to deal with when the time comes…which I don’t think it is as bad as R thinks it is…there is a reason that we bought bunkbeds and not just because N loves them so much…we bought them w the intent of the boys sharing a room and breaking the bunks down to regular beds as needed…
Plans. Our unpacking is often stymied…in order to work on E’s room, we must work on N’s room so we have room to do what we need to do. In order to work on N’s room, we have to rearrange the living room and parts of the basement. In order to get to those parts of the basement, we have to organize other parts of the basement…some of which includes selling off certain items (like a waterbed, the waterbed mattress, an electric stove…so on and so on…if you know someone who needs something, let us know…)
We have discovered we need something along the lines of a beer fridge—more like a beer and fresh fruits and veg fridge…or maybe just a beer and condiment fridge…and we both got rid of so much stuff from our fridges before we combined them, but we still lack room all over the place…it’s bizarre. Luckily, we still have my old fridge out in the shed. We still plan to go through the main fridge one more time before we do this, but overall, we think the 2nd fridge will actually be a benefit…and since, now that we live w R, the way we shop and eat and prepare food is different, the whole 2 fridge thing may actually only be temporary as well.
We also have two deep freezes. One is a small chest and the other a larger chest. We are planning to combine and condense and use only the larger chest. Then we can sell the other chest. First, we need to get the big one down into the basement. Right now, it’s in the car port…plugged in…working fine…and thank goodness it has a lock, because w my son around, we need one that locks…the little snoop. N is always on the look-out for popsicles and ice cream.
So much to do…at least we have time…and as much as we feel rushed at the moment, we all know we’re home and we’re good…that goes a long way to making things better when we all get overwrought here.
