Every Little Thing
Whoever said ‘it’s the little thing that matter’ got it all wrong. The little things are all that matter.
Take for instance, my house. The first time I tried to buy a house was January, 1987. I saw a house I liked and I called the realtor. The house was about five times what I could afford on my paltry entry-level salary, so I thanked the realtor and forgot it, but the fuse was lit. I wanted a home of my own.
Flash forward through two dozen moves, a slew of jobs, 13 cats and a decade as an independent consultant. I continued to yearn for a house, continued to search, and continued to fail. By the time 2005 opened, I had put offers down on 11 properties: 2 in Cleveland, 9 in St. Louis, and 1 in Chicago. I had succeeded in buying 3 of them, had held them for an average of 16 months and had made $2,200 in TOTAL profits from the combined sales. Each time I growled my way through a closing or yet another foiled sales contract, I would resolve never, ever to do it again.
But every spring I would emerge like a crocus, poking my head out, looking around the neighborhood and combing the open houses, hoping that this might be the year I could commit.
At last I found a house I liked. It had everything I required and was in my price range. I got a mortgage broker with a brain, I grit my teeth through Loan Commitment, and I signed the papers one day short of my 41st birthday. In total, I'd spent 19 years and 2 months looking for a house. Longer than most people take, admittedly, but then again, it took me 23 years to find my husband, so perhaps this is not so surprising.
I’ve lived here for almost 2 years, and while I’m very happy, it’s becoming obvious that the house is what my old friend “Cuba” used to call ‘una vieja con colorente’: an old woman with lots of make-up. There are pretty stencil patterns on the walls and all the doorways are trimmed in natural walnut. I have 2 huge bay/bow windows and a 3-tier deck, and all the trees in the yard are ‘mature’. But the trim is starting to separate from the walls, most of the appliances are hobbling around on walkers, just waiting for their turn to keel over, and the roof tiles are curling up. This last part means that 9 years into a 20-year roof, I’m going to have to replace it, along with the gutters and probably the windows, since the storms don’t drop all the way in and none of the screens stay in place during the summer months. I live in fear that one of the cats is going to lean on a screen and wind up in the compost bin.
On top of this, I’m in a constant frenzy because I can’t keep the house clean. Somehow, no matter how many ‘attractive storage bins’ I buy from Lowe’s, the place is always cluttered. I keep blaming it on Howard, but the truth is, there’s no basement, and so no real storage space. Well, there is a huge crawl space off the lower level, but I refuse to use it. I just hate the idea of a room full of boxed up ‘storage’ that’s never accessed, never used, and somehow, never makes it out to the curb. In an effort to prevent such a disaster, and since we don’t really have this option anyway, I’m forcing myself to ditch anything that is not in use Every Single Day. We’ve cleared out the big rooms and taken about 20 boxes worth of items to the shelters for donation, and still, there is crap everywhere. Clearly, we are going to have to move.
I’d been thinking for the last several months that we needed a bigger house, and now at last I had my proof. I spent weeks burning through spreadsheets, trying to work the budget on how we could afford a house twice the price of ours, which is roughly what it would cost to get a house just a little bit bigger and just a little bit newer.
I worked the numbers, factoring in how we could still pay for speech therapy, occupational therapy, nanny salaries, college tuition, and of course, the entire collection of V-Smile video games. I abandoned the idea when I remembered that the only way we could do it is to get a big bargain in this crappy market, which, of course, means that I would probably lose money on the house I own. So I deleted the spreadsheet and went upstairs with broom and box in hand, looking for anything I could throw away. I tossed all I could, and there was still crap everywhere. Defeated, I returned to the spreadsheets.
Today, at the grocery store, while freaking out over the bill and adding it to the list of expenses that I’d forgotten to include on the New House Extravaganza, I picked up a decorating magazine. I’m not one for magazines at all, and having a 5-year old has given me the ability to induce Temporary Blindness at the checkout counter (where all the candy is housed). But today, I spotted a For the Home magazine that was neither “Frou-Frou Weekly” nor “The Contractor’s Crack: All Things Seen From a Squatting Position”. It was just a sensible magazine with 2 blurbs on the cover: “Open Your Cramped Spaces" and “Clear Your House of Clutter—Now!” Into the cart it went.
I read through a bit of it this afternoon between throwing out all of DS’s toys and threatening to move Howard’s office to the deck if he didn’t clean out his side of the closet. I was ogling pictures of all the teeny spaces made gargantuan, and starting to believe that the house needed a complete furniture makeover, when I spotted a Sofa On Jaunty Angle photo. It occurred to me that we could get better use out of the family room if we did something similar.
During the next 2 hours, we (and by ‘we’, I mean Howard) lugged the bistro table up from the crawl space, only to lug it back down again, moved the breakfast table in and out of the kitchen and then in and out of the family room, and then jerked the couch across the carpet, tripping over the video game wires all the while because DS refused to stop playing, even after we’d taken away the couch, then the ottoman, and then angled the television so he couldn’t see the screen.
It was awful, but when I sat on the couch in its new place, I knew we’d done the right thing. It’s as if we’ve moved to a new house with a beautiful, spacious, open floor plan. The kitchen clutter has reduced dramatically. The family room borders on the expansive, AND I can see the library, the living room, both staircases and both yards from my spot on the couch. It is AWESOME, and it only took moving the couch about 8 feet and 90 degrees. One little thing, and suddenly I’m in a brand new place. I’m like Dorothy right now, tapping my slipper socks together and murmuring, ‘there’s no place like home’. Indeed there isn’t.
I don’t know whether this is a renewal of my vows to the house or a new perspective on what’s always been here or maybe just a lesson that it’s ok to pick up a magazine every now and then. It doesn’t matter; I changed one teeny thing and now my whole world has opened up.
The ending is a good one, but the moral is biting. I wasted a lot of time picking through the numbers, mulling the feasibility of a bigger house when I didn’t want to move, and we probably shouldn’t consider it anyway. That happens to me a lot. I spend a lot of time worrying about stupid crap, blowing something out to the rafters, rather than taking my time and looking for a simple (or simpler) solution. I did all that number crunching, all that worrying, and as it turns out, all I needed to do was relocate the couch. I’m focused on the wrong things and worried about the Big Stuff when I should be watching (not worrying!) the little things around me.
In my defense, it did seem an obvious place to put the couch. The previous owners had their couch in the same spot, and it kept everyone from falling off the little step from the kitchen into the family room. Now that we’ve moved it though, the “real” obvious news is that it was completely in the way before. I took someone else’s truth and accepted it as my own. Big mistake. Big. What else am I missing?
Rather than worry about whether the house is big enough, or whether I’m getting ahead at work quickly enough, or what appliances I'll have to replace next, I need to focus on what’s is in front of me. I need to see things, really see them, and then use my brain for something other than coming up with a Disaster Recovery plan for Every Worst Case Scenario Happening Simultaneously. If I can just do that little thing, I think my life would be a whole lot different.
I’m not going to worry about next year, or Out There or Forever anymore. Those things will be taken care of Right Now, and in the million Right Now Moments that follow.
See? I did have a point. It was right there in front of me all the time.
A the M(icro Manager)
PS-Just as an aside regarding: the appliances, we had to replace the dishwasher and the hot water heater this week. I always knew that I appreciated hot water, but I didn’t know how much until I tried to take a cold water shower on Saturday night. Did you know that cold water actually pierces the scalp and causes bleeding-like sensations for hours after the impact stops? That was really something.
Also, the garbage disposal is on its last leg, as is the refrigerator, and all the countertops need replaced. But man, does it look great in here since we moved the couch. :)
Take for instance, my house. The first time I tried to buy a house was January, 1987. I saw a house I liked and I called the realtor. The house was about five times what I could afford on my paltry entry-level salary, so I thanked the realtor and forgot it, but the fuse was lit. I wanted a home of my own.
Flash forward through two dozen moves, a slew of jobs, 13 cats and a decade as an independent consultant. I continued to yearn for a house, continued to search, and continued to fail. By the time 2005 opened, I had put offers down on 11 properties: 2 in Cleveland, 9 in St. Louis, and 1 in Chicago. I had succeeded in buying 3 of them, had held them for an average of 16 months and had made $2,200 in TOTAL profits from the combined sales. Each time I growled my way through a closing or yet another foiled sales contract, I would resolve never, ever to do it again.
But every spring I would emerge like a crocus, poking my head out, looking around the neighborhood and combing the open houses, hoping that this might be the year I could commit.
At last I found a house I liked. It had everything I required and was in my price range. I got a mortgage broker with a brain, I grit my teeth through Loan Commitment, and I signed the papers one day short of my 41st birthday. In total, I'd spent 19 years and 2 months looking for a house. Longer than most people take, admittedly, but then again, it took me 23 years to find my husband, so perhaps this is not so surprising.
I’ve lived here for almost 2 years, and while I’m very happy, it’s becoming obvious that the house is what my old friend “Cuba” used to call ‘una vieja con colorente’: an old woman with lots of make-up. There are pretty stencil patterns on the walls and all the doorways are trimmed in natural walnut. I have 2 huge bay/bow windows and a 3-tier deck, and all the trees in the yard are ‘mature’. But the trim is starting to separate from the walls, most of the appliances are hobbling around on walkers, just waiting for their turn to keel over, and the roof tiles are curling up. This last part means that 9 years into a 20-year roof, I’m going to have to replace it, along with the gutters and probably the windows, since the storms don’t drop all the way in and none of the screens stay in place during the summer months. I live in fear that one of the cats is going to lean on a screen and wind up in the compost bin.
On top of this, I’m in a constant frenzy because I can’t keep the house clean. Somehow, no matter how many ‘attractive storage bins’ I buy from Lowe’s, the place is always cluttered. I keep blaming it on Howard, but the truth is, there’s no basement, and so no real storage space. Well, there is a huge crawl space off the lower level, but I refuse to use it. I just hate the idea of a room full of boxed up ‘storage’ that’s never accessed, never used, and somehow, never makes it out to the curb. In an effort to prevent such a disaster, and since we don’t really have this option anyway, I’m forcing myself to ditch anything that is not in use Every Single Day. We’ve cleared out the big rooms and taken about 20 boxes worth of items to the shelters for donation, and still, there is crap everywhere. Clearly, we are going to have to move.
I’d been thinking for the last several months that we needed a bigger house, and now at last I had my proof. I spent weeks burning through spreadsheets, trying to work the budget on how we could afford a house twice the price of ours, which is roughly what it would cost to get a house just a little bit bigger and just a little bit newer.
I worked the numbers, factoring in how we could still pay for speech therapy, occupational therapy, nanny salaries, college tuition, and of course, the entire collection of V-Smile video games. I abandoned the idea when I remembered that the only way we could do it is to get a big bargain in this crappy market, which, of course, means that I would probably lose money on the house I own. So I deleted the spreadsheet and went upstairs with broom and box in hand, looking for anything I could throw away. I tossed all I could, and there was still crap everywhere. Defeated, I returned to the spreadsheets.
Today, at the grocery store, while freaking out over the bill and adding it to the list of expenses that I’d forgotten to include on the New House Extravaganza, I picked up a decorating magazine. I’m not one for magazines at all, and having a 5-year old has given me the ability to induce Temporary Blindness at the checkout counter (where all the candy is housed). But today, I spotted a For the Home magazine that was neither “Frou-Frou Weekly” nor “The Contractor’s Crack: All Things Seen From a Squatting Position”. It was just a sensible magazine with 2 blurbs on the cover: “Open Your Cramped Spaces" and “Clear Your House of Clutter—Now!” Into the cart it went.
I read through a bit of it this afternoon between throwing out all of DS’s toys and threatening to move Howard’s office to the deck if he didn’t clean out his side of the closet. I was ogling pictures of all the teeny spaces made gargantuan, and starting to believe that the house needed a complete furniture makeover, when I spotted a Sofa On Jaunty Angle photo. It occurred to me that we could get better use out of the family room if we did something similar.
During the next 2 hours, we (and by ‘we’, I mean Howard) lugged the bistro table up from the crawl space, only to lug it back down again, moved the breakfast table in and out of the kitchen and then in and out of the family room, and then jerked the couch across the carpet, tripping over the video game wires all the while because DS refused to stop playing, even after we’d taken away the couch, then the ottoman, and then angled the television so he couldn’t see the screen.
It was awful, but when I sat on the couch in its new place, I knew we’d done the right thing. It’s as if we’ve moved to a new house with a beautiful, spacious, open floor plan. The kitchen clutter has reduced dramatically. The family room borders on the expansive, AND I can see the library, the living room, both staircases and both yards from my spot on the couch. It is AWESOME, and it only took moving the couch about 8 feet and 90 degrees. One little thing, and suddenly I’m in a brand new place. I’m like Dorothy right now, tapping my slipper socks together and murmuring, ‘there’s no place like home’. Indeed there isn’t.
I don’t know whether this is a renewal of my vows to the house or a new perspective on what’s always been here or maybe just a lesson that it’s ok to pick up a magazine every now and then. It doesn’t matter; I changed one teeny thing and now my whole world has opened up.
The ending is a good one, but the moral is biting. I wasted a lot of time picking through the numbers, mulling the feasibility of a bigger house when I didn’t want to move, and we probably shouldn’t consider it anyway. That happens to me a lot. I spend a lot of time worrying about stupid crap, blowing something out to the rafters, rather than taking my time and looking for a simple (or simpler) solution. I did all that number crunching, all that worrying, and as it turns out, all I needed to do was relocate the couch. I’m focused on the wrong things and worried about the Big Stuff when I should be watching (not worrying!) the little things around me.
In my defense, it did seem an obvious place to put the couch. The previous owners had their couch in the same spot, and it kept everyone from falling off the little step from the kitchen into the family room. Now that we’ve moved it though, the “real” obvious news is that it was completely in the way before. I took someone else’s truth and accepted it as my own. Big mistake. Big. What else am I missing?
Rather than worry about whether the house is big enough, or whether I’m getting ahead at work quickly enough, or what appliances I'll have to replace next, I need to focus on what’s is in front of me. I need to see things, really see them, and then use my brain for something other than coming up with a Disaster Recovery plan for Every Worst Case Scenario Happening Simultaneously. If I can just do that little thing, I think my life would be a whole lot different.
I’m not going to worry about next year, or Out There or Forever anymore. Those things will be taken care of Right Now, and in the million Right Now Moments that follow.
See? I did have a point. It was right there in front of me all the time.
A the M(icro Manager)
PS-Just as an aside regarding: the appliances, we had to replace the dishwasher and the hot water heater this week. I always knew that I appreciated hot water, but I didn’t know how much until I tried to take a cold water shower on Saturday night. Did you know that cold water actually pierces the scalp and causes bleeding-like sensations for hours after the impact stops? That was really something.
Also, the garbage disposal is on its last leg, as is the refrigerator, and all the countertops need replaced. But man, does it look great in here since we moved the couch. :)
posted by Former Fat Girl Gone Skinny | 9:00 PM
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