Home Sweet Home
January 19, 2003
With the current state of the economy and the fact that the holidays are over, budgets, belts and wallets all seem to be pulled that much tighter.Most of us are watching our money disappear into thin air a little more closely than usual.
I recently entertained thoughts of moving.I was feeling the house crunch.Too much stuff, too many family members and not enough house.It certainly seemed big, huge even, when we bought our home five years ago.Since then we have furnished our empty living and dining rooms and added a family member or two.
We were able to rise above the first urge to move by finishing our basement.It is now a guest room/playroom/office area/extra T.V. room.Of course, like new car smell, the novelty quickly wore off and the house seemed small again.In retrospect, having a child who is experiencing the terrible two’s may have had something to do with these heightened feelings of confinement.That and the fact that we are in the middle of a very cold winter snap!
I am now totally convinced that we must move and it must be a move worth our while (whatever that means).So I drag my family out for a fun day of house viewing.It is both exciting and fun but the sad truth is that it scared us. A new house sounded great.You know, bigger rooms all needing paint and custom window dressings, a fresh yard screaming to be landscaped, eaves without troughs and the list goes on.We would be sweeping instead of vacuuming and going in the basement to enjoy the ‘natural’ central air conditioning because hey, all this stuff costs money and we would once again be ‘new house’ poor.
So we drove back home with our tailpipe between our legs.Once home I started the daunting task of disassembling the Christmas tree.It took me two days until I was ready for it to be escorted outside and this is when the magic happened.Suddenly I had my mansion.The space that I so desperately craved was right in front of me.I had enough room to buy another piece of furniture or two. Maybe a plant ladder or a big, overstuffed comfy chair (don’t tell my husband).I stood in this newly found space and decided that we would have a party to celebrate.There would be a dance floor even!We now had so much more room to entertain.
The moral of this story goes something like this. From this experience I have learned that you always use whatever space you have and usually fill up empty space as soon as the pocket book permits.If the space is full, you are cramped and if it is empty, the home seems cold.But have no fear as I have come up with a solution to cramped quarters that is much cheaper than buying the two acre lot and building ‘custom’ before you are ready and I offer this advice to you free of charge.Just buy a big tree.It doesn’t even have to be a Christmas tree.Anything massive will do.Just set it up in the problem room for a good three weeks to a month and then take it down.New space is reborn without a higher mortgage and everyone is happy, for now….