Operation make-house-comfortable

[marydell]

So when we bought our house back in 2002 or so, we calculated up what we could supposedly afford according to the bank, and then we bought a house for half that much because even in 2002 we knew that banks will basically fuck you if you let them make budgetary decisions for you.  This resulted in a smallish house that's needed a lot of work, which has been fine.  The money we're not spending on an overly-high mortgage goes into fixing things up on our schedule.  The next project, hopefully happening in the spring depending on finances, is to finish the unfinished parts of the basement.  

That means that our contractor guys will have to be able to move freely around the basement, and that the spaces we're currently using will shrink by a couple of feet as walls and insulation go in.  Up until this weekend this has been UNPOSSIBLE.  Aside from my library and Mike's office/project room being down there (bookcases=walls), there are so many plastic storage containers.  Constantly rearranging them like tetris blocks does not make them any fewer or smaller, unfortunately.  The garage is full of Mike's RC airplane-flying hobby (I call it "the hangar" these days) plus lawn stuff and general garage stuff so moving the containers to the garage just makes them hard to get to, and makes the garage even more cluttered which in turn makes me go ARGH.   Of course what really needs to be done is to go through all the containers and throw half the stuff in them out, but we so do not have time for that.

So, although I feel like I have utterly failed in the war on materialism, I rented a storage unit and moved nearly all of the containers and boxes to it.  It's only 2 blocks away and is not too creepy, so I won't mind going to and fro if I need to get something out of it.   All the other random stuff fits on shelves in the laundry room now, and the floor of the laundry room has nothing on it but baskets of laundry. YAY.  I'm not crazy about paying rent for potentially forever, but it's not an unreasonable amount, and if someone asked me "would you pay an extra $$ of mortgage to have an extra room in your house?" I'd totally say yes.

Next up: utterly failing in the war on dirt.  I have house cleaners coming in a couple of weeks to do a complete spring cleaning, mainly to get ready for the house guests who are coming in early September.  Hopefully we can keep it up from there, but if not we're going to rearrange the budget so we can have them come back once a month.  I hate this, because it pushes certain buttons of mine (and is not so cheap), but if I'm going to fail as a housekeeper I'd rather fail and have a clean, not-overcrowded house than fail and have a dirty one full of storage boxes.  At least, that is what I keep telling myself.

Comments

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

And I am cheering you on in your planning and sense.

[bifemmefatale.livejournal.com]

Take my advice: hire an individual who does housecleaning and not Merry Maids or one of the big corporations. MM treats their employees like dirt and rushes them through houses--they don't do a good job, and they overcharge. When I used to clean I picked up several accounts from people who had had MM and were disappointed.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

I'll keep that in mind, thanks.