Today was a good day. Sean and I, tired from two days on the road, slept until about 11:00. We got up and drove over to his old apartment to get a bed frame he left there, and then went to Urban Roots to get mulch for the garden. I had hopes of planting my tomatoes and maybe even some flowers but it’s supposed to get down to the 30s tonight. My friend Maura, who now works at Urban Roots, told me that a few older women came into the store and said that they’d been gardening around here for years. They warned against planting anything before June 1st. I think I will listen to my elders.
Before we left on Friday, we agreed that Sunday would be a “get shit done around the house” day and I have to say, planning these sort of things in advance is the way to go. I often get swept up in a mood when it comes to projects around the house and expect, unfairly, Sean to match my mood. Today it worked out well and since about 5:30 or so we’ve been able to relax and enjoy ourselves.
One of the projects was rearranging the apartment. For about five months now, we’ve been planning on moving our bedroom from the tiny, closet-sized room it was in to a slightly bigger room. We debated moving into what is now the living room and either constructing a new wall or installing some kind of door (french doors, curtains, etc.), or moving into one of the actual other bedrooms. I’ll spare you the boring details of our decision and just say that I’m now sitting on my bed in one of the actual other bedrooms. Oh, and we have a bed frame now. Which means our bed and boxspring is not on the floor. Which makes us adults. Which is awesome, I guess.
I realized fairly recently that I was having this “fight or flight” argument with myself in relation to my house, both inside and out. I found myself unsatisfied with my living space and our backyard and porch situations. At the farthest point of the “flight” instinct, I thought about what it would mean for me to move out. Kind of ridiculous, no? I mean, I own this house.
At some point I convinced myself that I needed to wait to do things like put in a garden, buy an outdoor table for my porch, and otherwise invest in the more aesthetic improvements to my house. I guess I was thinking that all the major, practical things needed to get done before I could focus on frivolous things like a garden, despite the fact that I didn’t think anyone else’s gardens were frivolous. And because of this false choice, I wasn’t enjoying my house. At all. I would go to other people’s places and think, “Wow, I wish I could sit out in the backyard like this at my house.”
Again, kind of ridiculous. I wasn’t doing any of the improvments to my house that would make me enjoy it more and as a result I wasn’t feeling motivated to do anything, neither the beautifying projects nor the necessary ones. And like a lot of the revelations I have, the solution to this internal argument wasn’t complex: I needed to get to work.
So I cleaned up the porch, bought inexpensive but attractive outdoor furniture, and started maintaining a small but rewarding garden. Inside the house, I finally hung up pictures I’d framed months ago, decided on where we’d put the bedroom, and planned a work day with Sean. It snowballed, this getting to work thing, and now I feel excited about
When I bought this house at 23 I expected that the corresponding responsibilities would challenge and change me, and they have. What I didn’t appreciate then however, and what I love now, is that the opportunities to be challenged and changed are both loud and quiet but will always, in the end, be heard.
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courtney - I love how it’s NOT just a house, you know? You really shed some light on home ownership in ways that I had never considered. The relationship you have with place–and it really IS a relationship by the sounds of it–how it shifts and evolves, how to take care of any problems that arise. And working on your house is practically like, communicating with it… and we all know what they say about communication. I adore this entry.
Teresa - Well said, Courtney and Whitney.
Whit, I totally understand your fight or flight notions about home ownership, and I have been living in my house for almost 7 years. I still feel bad that I have not upgraded from most of the hand-me-down furniture we got from friends when we moved in, we still haven’t turned our upstairs into a master bedroom like we have been planning since we moved in, and our 25+ year old oven has been the most consistent source of fights between Dan and me over the last 5 years because he is unreasonably attached to it and refuses to let us replace it.
I am perpetually dissatisfied with my front garden plot and always trying to tweak it (though maybe I am just looking for new rasons to run away to the greenhouse when I don’t want to clean or do other chores). Beyond aesthetics, we have some stuff that needs to be fixed that we really can’t afford to fix and it stresses me out whenever I think about it (especially our persistent drainage issues in the basement).
Some days, I want to just throw in the towel and find somewhere new to start over. Of course, all that would REALLY get me is a new set of problems (especially because I’d still have all the castoff furniture). You are right that one of the great things about being a homeowner is that it gives you new opportunities and challenges.
And congrats on getting the bed off of the floor! My grandmother bought us a bed for my 27th birthday and it was such a great feeling to sleep in a REAL bed again. It had been 5 years of the mattress on the floor, and really, that is too long.