Us Time.

After 5 Christmas gatherings spread over 3 weekends, we finally get some time to relax. Adam's on a mission to get the office in shape. The office has pretty much been Adam's room to do whatever he wants in it. At one point we both had desks in there, but I moved mine out years ago, and it's just his room. I often call it his horder room since he's not one to throw things away, but he's getting better. Right now he's trying to clean it up so he can paint it. Once the room gets organized, I think it will look really nice.

My parents bought us a new dining room lamp for Christmas and my dad gave us a "gift certificate" for installation, so he'll be coming over on Saturday to finally replace the light we've never liked but haven't done anything with for the last 6 years. Apparently 5-6 years is my breaking point for doing house work. Last year I'd had enough of the wood panel that needed to be fixed in the kitchen, a job that took roughly 15 minutes to complete, but 5 years to actually get started. The second we moved into the house, we wanted to change the dining room lamp, but for reasons unknown, we've never have.

My mission this week is to get the house organized. I spent way too many hours last week cleaning the house, that now I want to keep it, but if it's not organized, it's never going to stay clean. We have a small house that always feels cluttered, and we're both feeling the strain of space. There are only two of us, there's plenty of room, especially considering that Adam grew up in a house slightly larger with 3 people, 2 of which are both over six feet tall. We have enough space for us, we just think we don't. Part of the issue is that we have piles of stuff everywhere. I'll get a pile of things ready to donate and Adam decides we wants to sell some of it. So, then it sits in a "to be sold" pile and rarely ever leaves the house until I find the pile again and just donate it without him knowing. This week I want to remove the baker's rack from our dining room that serves as a pile holder more than anything. I think for $30, buying 2-3 things, I can eliminate an eye sore and make something more functional. I want to replace the open space with a nice bookshelf and get rid of 2 smaller, mis-matched bookshelves Adam's mom gave us out of her house when we moved into together 7 years ago (so she could buy new things). At the time, they were fine, but now, they're over-flowing and not as functional at something larger could be. Of course, Adam's solution is to just get rid of some of the books. I'm hoping to work out a compromise on this situation and by compromise, I mean convince him to see it my way. Kidding... kind of. I'll see what I find at Ikea tomorrow.

I think the biggest thing for me is that I want to have an adult-looking house. We were young when we bought the house and as I near turning 30 (in 6 months), I want it to look like two professional adults live here. Yes, we'll still have a framed Nintendo poster and concert posters around, but I don't want the rest of the house to look like a messy closet. Also, not moving for almost 7 years means that we've brought things into the house with very little going out. Binging is the other half of my organization plan. I have an exciting couple of days of purging and organizing ahead of me. Happy New Year to me!