Wednesday, July 25, 2012

A New Lifestyle

We took possession of New House on March 23.  The remodeling phase was mostly done by the end of April, and by the end of May we had enough furniture in to live fairly comfortably.  The rest of the furniture arrived by the end of June.

We had accumulated enough kitchen "stuff" over the 30 years we've been together to set up the kitchen without having to buy a lot of new stuff.  We did buy some new items, just because we wanted to and not because we really had to.  This bring us to one advantage of the 2-house-lifestyle:  We were able to declutter the Old kitchen to furnish the New kitchen - a benefit to both houses.

Another advantage is something I alluded to in my last post.  With the New 2 car garage, we were able to close out the storage unit that we'd been renting for 2 years.  Most of what was in there was stuff we kept from my parent's house, and most of that stuff just needs to be gone through.  We had boxes and boxes of financial and medical papers.  Some needed to be shredded and some can just be tossed, but it all had to be gone through.  When all the boxes were in a storage unit, it just wasn't convenient to get a box, haul it home and go through it - so we didn't.  Just in the last month, we've been working at a rate of about a box a day and have managed to get rid of almost a dozen boxes so far.

A 3rd advantage has presented itself twice so far - What happens when the power goes out?  So far, the power has gone out at each house once, and each time for an extended period.  We were able to load up the stuff from the "dark" refrigerator and take all that food to the working fridge and not lose anything.  We were also able to sleep in the house with power so we could still have A/C and/or fans, and I could still sleep with my CPAP machine.  (Without which I have to sleep sitting up in a recliner.)  It turns out that even though the houses are close to each other, they are on different power circuits.  So far, they have not both been out at the same time.

As soon as school was out, we started sleeping at New House.  We love being here in the mornings.  The porch is glorious in the morning sun.  The schedule we've developed has sort of evolved, partly because we don't yet have TV service at New House.  We like to watch the evening news, so it has made sense to spend the day at New House and then go to Old House around 5-6ish p.m. and then spend the evening there doing laundry and watching our favorite shows on TV.  Then we come "home" at the end of the evening to go to bed.  We have developed a transition routine for each trip back and forth.  We have a place where we put stuff that goes to the other house, and we are usually hauling clothes, food, paper tidbits from one house to the other.  So far that has been fairly easy to manage.

Both Hubs and I have our computers (with regular internet service) and offices at Old House, so we do our "work' there.  I do have a laptop with a wireless internet connection at New House, but I don't use that for financial things.   At New House, I play the piano, work on sewing projects, read, play computer games - it is sort of a "vacation house" for me.

I'm sure the routine will change once school is back in session, but for now, this 2-house-lifestyle is working for us.

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