Let there be light.

There's been a Bridgeman's down the street from our house that's been closed for about 5 years. It's just been an empty building since then. For some reason, Adam decided to google it and discovered something amazing... a Pizza Luce is moving in! I thought it must be a joke or a fluke, but I didn't believe it. After some of my own digging, it was confirmed. I'm so excited to have a bar/restaurant that's so close and also so good right by our house. We went to brunch with my parents at the Hopkins Luce (that used to be Baker's Square), and they did a really good job with the re-design, and of course, it was a delicious. It's expected to open in June or July, I can't wait. But I also get a little sad knowing that we're probably only going to live in our house for a couple more years. Of course the neighborhood starts to get "cool" as we begin to think about where our next house is. But the upside is that hopefully all the renovations in the neighborhood will help improve our property values and make it that much easier to sell our house. I keep thinking there has to be a young couple like us out there that will love our house when we're ready to move on. But I do know that getting a Luce isn't a bad thing for the neighborhood and gives us one more pizza option at just a block away. Hopefully all the walking to Luce will offset all the increased calories I'll consume!

Weekend Calm.

Almost every weekend used to end with me trying to fit in all the housework on Sunday evening, typically after dinner. Laundry, dishes, cleaning. It was always too much to do and not enough time, but week after week I kept doing it. Adam would always make fun of me for my Sunday evening surge of energy. Tonight, I'm relaxing on the couch, enjoying a cup of coffee (decaf) while Adam is frantically trying to fix his headlight. He bought it yesterday afternoon, yet he waited until 9pm on Sunday to attempt to put it in, now of course, he's less than pleased with how the process is turning out. I have to say, I love my new Sunday routine and wonder how and why I spent so many years with my previous routine. Now that out our house has been decluttered, it's so much easier to keep clean and to maintain it. I didn't know if we would be able to maintain it, but we have, and it's so much easier than I thought it would be. I used to spend so much time just picking up the house that I barely had time to actually clean it. Now that its already picked up, I can easily clean. And I can get it all done before Sunday night and enjoy my evening.

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!

Quotes from my house

"Can you take the garbage out? You still have pants on." Pause. "Nevermind, it's not garbage day yet."

I love that our household duties are getting divided based on who is ready to leave the house or not, or in this case, who has pants on.

Maybe I'll just do the laundry

I love my husband dearly, but he makes me nervous when he does the laundry. We typically have 3 loads each week: whites, colors, and towels/sheets/misc. I don't really separate beyond that as we don't really have much more. 3 loads of laundry can all be done in an afternoon. The dryer takes awhile sometimes, so that's really the only hold up in the process. I wasn't feeling well after dinner and just went to bed early last night. Adam said he would put the dishes away and finish the laundry. I thought it was a good deal for me. I woke up this morning and the dishes were in the dishwasher, but not any of the pots or pans used to cook with. Our dishwasher safe grill (used to cook Adam's steak) was sitting on the counter. I'm not a fan of most meat items, let alone the next day smell of a grill used to cook them... ewww. When I got home from work (a few minutes ago) everything was still out and the laundry still wasn't done. I asked Adam about the towels and he said they were still in the washer. So he successfully transferred one load of wash into the dryer in 4+ hours.

The speed of the male species doing household chores amazes me.