Cleanout

Every six months, there is a consignment sale at the church down the street, which is where we normally buy a lot of the clothes for the kids for the next few months - it beats going to the mall. For the first time this year, we've decided to sell items at the sale which we no longer need - clothes, toys, and other stuff the kids have outgrown.

I took the kids yesterday to the sale, and they actually made measured decisions about what to get or not get. They actually said no to some things a decent amount of the time, so I know they were actually paying attention to all the clothes I'd pulled out.

After my classes end in April, we'll hopefully start looking at doing some re-designs within the house. Once clutter is removed, we can start working through the house.

We'll go from the living room (which is probably the easiest to do) and work backwards through the house - kitchen, then dining room, then the rest of the first floor. We've talked for ages about getting new dining room furniture, so hopefully if we both have jobs over the summer we can finally look at a replacement set.

Thankfully, we don't need to go after a new television right now - even though the set we had downstairs broke, we were able to pull out and hook up another set - the same television I had when I was an undergraduate many moons ago!

Next, we work on the front and the outside of the house - a lot of lawn work, before the weather gets hot, and finally putting in a food garden of sorts, though I will not be filling cabinets with SPAM and other survivalist measures - yet.

Lastly, we'll work on upstairs. With Alex starting kindergarten, it'll be time to look at some kids furniture for his room, including a desk so he can actually do homework. He's actually excited about having homework like I've had - which is good, but strange, since I don't ever remember being excited about homework. We'll also need to re-do Sammie's room, as she's getting ready for a big-girl bed and we'll have to look at bedroom sets which would fit well with the rest of the house.

In a recession, you don't look to sell your house. You look to upgrade what's already there. Since things have been tight and may stay that way for a while, we'll want to find something with decent quality but mildly inexpensive if at all possible. We really need to change the layout of the house so it feels more like a home instead of a place to store all our stuff, as George Carlin would have put it.

I'd like to actually have people over sometime for a poker game, movie night, or other fun gathering of folks in my own house. I can't wait until I actually have a modicum of time to see people for more than 10 minutes.