lessons from a house

Moving day, which seemed to be creeping toward us at a turtle's crawl, is now one week away.

Much of the little stuff is taken care of -- clutter trashed, furniture sold, boxes packed. Each night when I go to bed I am caught off-guard by the starkness of the empty room. The only thing left to do is pack up the kitchen, and the unavoidable little things that almost seem to not want to move with us: spare change, those dusty recipes forgotten on the top of the refrigerator, extra batteries at the bottom of a drawer.

A week from today, all those final touches will be made and we will go to bed for the last time in this big box of a house. A week from today, I hope to put to rest many of the angry bees that have buzzed around my brain for the last year.

As happy as I am to be leaving this house, I won't be going without a few lessons:

1. I'm not a big house person. Most nights, Uno sprints upstairs to play video games or watch TV or do whatever it is teenagers do in the privacy of their own worlds. There were nights I only saw him for dinner and to say goodnight. There were nights I fell asleep early and never even said goodnight. Having a gameroom upstairs made it far too easy to spend time apart. In a small house, even when we weren't doing things together, we were still together, and I miss that.
2. Having more space does not eliminate clutter. This really amazed me. One might think that, given 2500 square feet of space, a family of ... oh, I don't know ... THREE PEOPLE would be able to find a spot for all their things and keep their home neat and tidy. This is absolutely not true. You could put one person in a castle and still end up with the appearance of a frat house the morning after a kegger. People: if you can't find anywhere to put all your things and you have a huge house -- you have too much stuff!! I'm willing to bet that even though I sold over half our belongings and trashed endless piles of junk, I still have way more than I need.
3. Vaulted ceilings just mean hard to reach cobwebs.
4. Having a big place to entertain will not magically transform me into the type of person that entertains effortlessly -- or even likes sharing my time with people.
5. Empty bedrooms that used to contain the sound of children playing are an open, festering wound that refuses to heal.

I'm sure the tiny apartment (I have said that I am moving into a cubicle-sized box, right? A cubihouse!) will come with all of its own new lessons. I'm actually looking forward to them. We may be packed together like sardines, but we're choosing this. I like the new us, the growing couple that makes plans instead of frantically reacting to the storms.

This could make the next year of lessons much easier to stomach.