Jason and I got to talking last night about "making the best with what we have" Its clear to us that a bigger house is NOT in our immediate future. It doesn't mean we are giving up, it just means we are going to look into making what we have work for us. This past week I spend every waking moment organizing, throwing, donating, packing away. Items that were no longer a necessity in our immediate living space found a more appropriate home. I packed up all of the kids out-grown clothes, the baby toys...some we kept while the rest was donated. I organized all of the children's books. We kept everything we could and left it to one book shelf while the ones that were falling apart were thrown-away and others were donated.
I washed down walls, trim, ceiling fans. I cleaned out closets, drawers, and crawl spaces. I even cleaned out the drawers from our bed. Lets just say, I have a rather "LARGE" collection of sheets. Why? I am not sure.
Any-who, long story short, I ended up donating two garbage size bags, boxed 5 boxes of clothes and toys, and put about 3 bags of trash out. It feels so good to purge. Sadly the "HIGH" of cleaning and organizing didn't last long. I was hoping that if I put more action into my words and stopped complaining about living here things would feel lighter in the house. I would feel better about living here. Lets be honest though no matter how much I organize and clean, this house just isn't equip to handle a family of 7.
In the end, Jason and I have decided to put a small addition onto our house. Ideally this is *NOT* what we want to do. Putting more money into a home that is already a sinking ship makes no sense to us. But buying a bigger home is completely out of the question for at least the next two years. The addition will not give us an extra bathroom like we need, nor an extra bedroom. However, it will give us an extra 230 sq. feet of living space. The space we are taking about is our porch. It will be hard to loose this space in the summer time, but its really our only option. We cannot add "UP" nor can we remodel our cellar. So this is really it for us.
This room will be a place for the kids to play, draw, learn. A place that Jason and I can entertain during the evening while the kids are asleep. A place I can sew while not bothering them while they sleep. A place I can have girl scouts and not feel like we are on top of each other in my living room/dining room. Though the space is not *HUGE* it will help relive some much needed "stress" for all of us. We can finally keep our upstairs for sleeping only, which will help me when it comes to cleaning :-)
Of course, the idea is wonderful. The money situation is what is keeping us from starting this project. We are cutting corners in all ways possible. But it still is over budget. It sucks that whatever way we turn, we are hit by a huge road block. So for now, just pray we can figure out what to do. That we can hopefully add on sooner then later and the money situation will resolve itself. Until then....we wait...
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