This Post Ended Up Sounding Way More Whiny Than I Intended…

A friend’s status message the other day was something like, “Home ownership is exhausting.” Indeed!

Although we closed on our house on April 20th, we didn’t actually move in until May 24th. Our lease was up the end of May (well, technically we went month-to-month after our previous lease ended in April) and having a month overlap between renting and owning meant we had time to get the kitchen renovations started, paint a few rooms, pack our belongings, and move over to the new place. We somehow thought we’d get so much more done with the house before we actually moved in, but really we only ended up painting two rooms. (And hiring contractors to start the kitchen and install new floors, but at least that wasn’t manual labor on our part.)

We make trips to Home Depot or Lowes more than once a week. Target, too. We still have our serving dishes, barware, and booze packed away until we buy some storage pieces for the dining room. Our living room, while large, has a layout that just doesn’t work with two couches, so we need to replace one with a couple of chairs. We have a few boxes of items that need to be freecycled or craigslisted or donated. Although we replaced the master closet, we still don’t have doors for it. (I’m just calling it a “walk-in” closet right now, even though it’s really a “walk-up-to” closet.) Our brand new refrigerator has a bum part that keeps the freezer from getting sufficiently cold, so it needs to be replaced. (At no charge, thank goodness.) Our washing machine puts out cold water when you turn it to hot, and hot water when you turn it to cold, so we’ve got a plumber coming in to fix that. (Adam attempted to himself, but to do so some valve needs to be replaced or else it starts leaking everywhere… I don’t exactly know. I’m leaving that sort of fix-it stuff to him.) The washing machine and dryer are also probably 25 years old and we have to talk nicely to them so they don’t break right away. Adam went to clean the gutters out last weekend because there were baby trees growing out of them, but when he got up the ladder he learned that the previous owner had installed a gutter cover… that apparently didn’t work, so we had to hire someone to take those off and clear out the gutters for us. We’ve painted the dining room, but still need to paint the living room hopefully by the end of this month when Adam’s parents come to visit. There’s nothing hung on the walls anywhere. The carpet desperately needs to be vacuumed. I’m completely ignoring that one bathroom in our house even exists, because it’s so ugly and the sliding glass door to the shower scares me. Not to mention that the one room in the house the previous owner attempted to update/renovate — the master bathroom — has crooked floor tiles, a crooked toilet, and a crooked light fixture. (Clearly, this man did not own a ruler or a level.) It also looks like it belongs in some Florida vacation home… and not in a good way.

And I feel like this barely scratches the surface of all the things that need fixing/updating/replacing/purchasing.

I know it sounds like I am complaining, but I’m really not. I love our house. I love the neighborhood. I love the easier commute. We’re just at the point where it is hard to believe we’ll ever get settled, which can be really frustrating. Not that I expected to be all unpacked and settled in just a few weeks; it’s just that every time we cross one thing off the list, we seem to add at least two more and there’s no end in sight. It’s overwhelming. It’s exhausting.

At least our new kitchen is super pretty.