On September 1st, 2016 I began renting my house. But I never moved in.
Category Archives: Home Ownership
Operation: You Can’t Go Home (Nomad Edition)
I’ve moved 3 times since leaving the “house formerly known as home” – a way stop at my parents’ for 3 weeks until I moved into the snowbird’s for 5 months and then back to my parents’ for (hopefully only) 5 months. Moving 3 times within 6 months to places where I can only have a subset of my “stuff” has taught me a few things. Continue reading Operation: You Can’t Go Home (Nomad Edition)
Operation: You Can’t Go Home
Closing time… you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here…
Now that I’ve firmly planted that earworm, let me explain. I have been living in the house formerly known as “home” for a while now. The agreement was that I would leave when I bought a house or October 1st, whichever came first. Anyone who’s read my “Realtor.com is Tinder for Houses” post knows how the house hunt went (is going). So here we are at October 1st and I’ve packed up the last of my things. Continue reading Operation: You Can’t Go Home
Realtor.com is Tinder for Houses
I entered the housing market and the dating world almost simultaneously. Being someone who is technically inclined, I made sure to download the Realtor app. At the same time, I joined several dating sites (playing the odds) including Tinder. It didn’t take long for me to notice some striking similarities between house shopping and online dating.
Couch Time
Since we don’t use it much, the den has been a fairly neglected room in our house. If it weren’t for my grandfather’s generosity, it would only have a bookcase and some dog beds in it. Heck, it wouldn’t even have had dog beds in it but we’ve begun to use the wood stove for supplemental heat, which my single-coated critters appreciate. Continue reading Couch Time
Neat New Year
What is it about the new year that makes us feel like it is the perfect time to be productive? There is no magical space between 11:59pm and 12:00am that actually wipes the slate clean or begins something truly unusual – it is the same passage of time that happens 364 other days of the year. Yet still, we enter a new year with new hopes, new plans, and new goals. For me, New Year’s Day often includes a fit of cleaning and neatening up – both recovering from the holiday clutter and some of that mystical shiny “clean slate” effect. Aaron felt it too and we spent most of the afternoon puttering around the house getting “things” done.
Pros and Con-promises
All home improvement projects have pros and cons. In fact, sometimes I feel like Aaron and I spend more time and effort thinking about projects than actually completing them. We research, weigh the options, and estimate budgets. Information gathering trips to home improvement stores seem to add complexity and confusion more often than they provide clear solutions. This process holds true for all projects, even the small ones. The upside is that most of our project results are well thought out and turn out as we intended (or close).
At Your Disposal
One of the features of our house that is new to both Aaron and me is a garbage disposal. We knew not to put anything large through it and we knew to run the water, but beyond that we were clueless. The first time we ran it, it sounded rather gnarly, so we looked inside. We didn’t see anything amiss, so we assumed that was what a garbage disposal was supposed to sound like.
One Man’s Trash…
Is another (wo)man’s clean up project! Now that spring has finally arrived and I have some time on my hands, I started doing some manual labor in the yard. My main goal was to move the plowed gravel off our lawn and tidy up a bit. But I’ve discovered that my clean up project is more like an archaeological dig.
Continue reading One Man’s Trash…
Dishappointment
When Aaron and I decided to indulge and buy all-new kitchen appliances for the house, we did our usual research and came up with Kenmore as the brand that had each appliance we needed with the best performance at the right price. This wasn’t too surprising since our previous kitchen was all-Kenmore as well. So far, we have been mostly satisfied with our kitchen – except for the dishwasher. When we were doing our research, it didn’t occur to either of us to make sure that our new dishwasher had the same drain set up as our old one. The dishwasher in NY had a blade with a similar function to a garbage disposal so that we only had to scrape off the big chunks before using the dishwasher. I think we assumed that in 5 years, the prevalence and efficiency of that sort of feature would have surely increased. And you know what happens when you ass-u-me…