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.

finding the patterns

Everyone has bad days. You know the type: from the moment you wake up late for work everything seems to be balanced perfectly against you.

This was my Thursday. Call it what you will -- just one of those days, mercury in retrograde, haywire hormones, midlife crisis... but I was in major meltdown mode.

By lunchtime I was thinking about the sweet envelope full of cash waiting for me at home. I've been selling everything that isn't nailed down in preparation for the move into our new deluxe-style cubicle, so I've got a nice little stack of cash. It's been fun watching the money pile up, calling it my new "savings envelope" and putting it away with no temptation to spend. I like having some cushion. You'd think I would have figured this out sometime earlier in life, but eh -- I'm calling it a win that I've figured it out at all.

But Thursday?  Oh no... Thursday was a different monster altogether. I was dreaming of iPads and flat panel HDTV's big enough to eat your face. On Thursday I was ready to spend every last dollar I had put together.

In fact, although I was able to talk myself back off the crazy ledge, I still ended up in a gas station after work, Did I need gas? Nope. Not at all. I stopped to hunt the aisles for a drink I didn't really want and a snack I definitely didn't need.

The six bucks I forked over for a coffee-flavored Monster and bag of Doritos was hardly worth it, but it came from left over grocery money and didn't effect the budget, so I guess that's a good thing. And I did manage to keep myself off amazon.com and away from the Apple store. So my savings envelope has been protected. For now.

But the biggest thing I realized was how intense my need to spend money is when I am super stressed or having a nervous breakdown sort of day. I have triggers that can easily catapult me into a neurotic spendathon of doom. And that's what this year is all about. Finding the patterns, learning the triggers, giving up the spendaholic within so I can stop dreaming about a life well lived, and actually live my dreams.
Q985QNCXQTZ2