our home

Ron and I have been married for almost two years, and to look around our house (besides the 101 framed pictures of our wedding) you wouldn't know it. His contributions include clutter disguised as many various coffee making devises on the kitchen counter tops (which I am always trying to stuff into the cabinets because I hate a cluttered kitchen AND because I can probably count the number of times he's made coffee here on two hands), a big giant dust collecting elephant (which I've grown to love), a empty wooden crate that was once used to hold photo albums (which now holds a box of tissues), and lots, and lots, and lots, of clothes. I think that pretty much sums it up.

When I bought this house about a year before Ron moved to PA, it was just me. I had help moving and painting, but everything else was just me. I changed all the electrical outlets and switches, put in a few dimmer switches and even my own light fixture. I put in a new faucet and water filter, even fixed a leaky pipe in the basement. After living here for a year the one thing I hadn't done was hang pictures on the walls. Ron loves to tell the story of his first weekend here in PA where he came over to my house with a friend to help me hang pictures on the bare walls after a year. I guess it just takes me awhile to figure out where things belong.

So now after two years of marriage, two new additions to our family, and being embarrassed countless times about the mess that is our house, I've made it my mission to make "my" house "our home".

I trudge down the steps to our basement, take a big breath (and a Claritin), push aside the big green sheet hanging from the ceiling, and stare at the countless cardboard boxes that my in-laws drove down in a Uhaul from New Hampshire so many years ago. Going through the boxes I find even more various coffee making devises (ahhhh), more clothes (someone please help me), and BOOKS, boxes and boxes and boxes of books. Old books, new books, series of books, text books (my husband never went to college), french books (not books teaching french, books written in french, and he can't even speak french), cook books, children's books, Bibles (I think he has every version, in every language, in every color, ever published), if it has a cover and a spine, my husband owns it.

I hide all the various coffee making devises in a big plastic bin, force my husband to go through all of his clothes and shoes for Good Will, stuff everything else into those AMAZING plastic space bags, fill every available shelf with BOOKS, and declare our new found need for some bookshelves.

Now, remember ten pages ago when I mentioned that it takes me a long time to figure out where things belong? Well, I have a room in my house that, when Ron moved in had no furniture in it besides a giant couch that belongs in a mansion, a tiny little love seat that my parents bought when they got married and a desk that we only use to store more clutter. Ron and I go to Ikea and purchase a couple of bookshelves. We get them home to discover that our original blueprint for where they would go didn't look right. After countless hours of deliberation, and even more countless times of moving all of the furniture (I just couldn't decide without seeing it), we trek back to Ikea for even more shelves, we put everything together and bring all of the books up from the basement (this was a two week project).

And now... after living here for almost four years, the empty room that I just couldn't figure out what to do with, becomes the room that turns "my" house into "our home".