Creature Comforts

I have been on a mission since we moved, namely to transform a pile of boxes and a bunch of empty rooms into something we are able to call home. This mission has consumed most of my mornings, many of our evenings and much of our weekends. We're finally getting to the point at which everything essential is more or less put away, and the rest is woefully out of place.

Homes here have traditionally been built without garages, possibly because if you had an outbuilding around here, it was a barn. While our house was built in 1994, and is therefore not exactly a relic of the old South, we're just around the corner from houses built in the 1890s, and while these homes were not built to the same scale, they were built with the same aesthetic. So... we have no garage.

But surely we have a basement, you ask? No. A shed? No again. An attic? Well, yes, if you call a few sheets of plywood hurriedly thrown over the exposed beams of the ceiling an attic. Our landlord asked us to kindly not step in the unsupported areas, lest we put a leg through said ceiling. And, to be fair, we have a crawlspace. It's accessible from outside the house (the house is raised from the ground by about 3-4 feet) and it consists of a lightbulb, some damp earth covered rakishly by a tarp, a wide assortment of spiders and roaches, and about enough clearance to walk in doubled-over. This has been something of an adjustment, to say the least.

Those of you who saw the garage in our last house will understand how not having a garage might cause us some storage issues. I am a collector, of sorts. I cannot claim to have the more impressive and studied collections that some have, such as that of a person we know who has collected the twine from rolled-up newspapers for years, tied end-to-end, until it was long enough to transect a soccer field from goal to goal several times over. My collections are less intentional... I just can't bear to part with something that has memories attached to it. Well, after a while, almost everything has memories. So, while I have managed to decide to throw away enough stuff to necessitate two trips to the local "convenience center" (read "dump"), I have a really tough time with the last few boxes of miscellanea.

We have, however, succeeded in making a few rooms look livable, which brings me a great sense of accomplishment. So, for those of you who enjoy picturing us in our home... here are some pictures. I must say, moving has one benefit... it's a long-lasting good excuse to "nest."

The Kitchen


















































The Living Room





































































The Guest Room (Monte is displaying just how comfortable he thinks this room is. Hint hint)