The Crapshack

My condo is tiny. Everyone says their starter home was small, but maybe you haven't seen my house. It's, like, small for a college student. Small for a vacation rental. It's like living in an extended stay hotel. I bought it almost five years ago, when it was just little ol' me all by myself with my cats thinking that as long as I'm paying rent every month, I might as well be paying a mortgage and gain some equity in the meantime. It was absolutely the best I could afford at the time, and compared to the other shitholes in my price range it was a little piece of heaven. My realtor called me on my 23rd birthday to tell me that my offer had been accepted, and I closed in May 2005. I was so excited. And then a few months later, the bubble burst. *sigh.*

About a week after I moved in I met Bill, who two years later became my husband. By the time we got married we were desperate for something bigger, so we rented it out and moved to my home state of Washington, where my family lives. Our rental income was never even close to enough to cover the cost of the condo, so once we started planning a family we quickly realized that we'd have to move back into it in order for me to stay home with the baby. So in November, when P$ (pronounced "P Money", as we like to call him) was about 3 months old, we moved out of our big rental house and back into the crapshack. We'd love to sell it, but we're ridiculously upside down in our mortgage, so we're stuck with it until we come up with a better plan. So now my mission is to make it as comfortable, and childproof, as possible.

So here's what I have to work with: We have 800 square feet that consists of two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a kitchen-living room thing, in which lives my husband, my baby, a dog, a cat, and me. And some cockroaches. We own very little furniture because we've moved so many times, and have never felt like it was worth investing in good furniture when all our homes have been temporary. This time, however, we think we'll be here a while, so we're going to do it right.

We've been strategizing for a few months now and we think we've come up with a pretty good plan:

1) Buy dishes. Can you believe I've never owned a set of matching dishes in my life? I do now. I spent months shopping for them only to buy them at Ikea.

2) Rent a storage unit. Fill it with crap.

3) Move the "office" out of the second bedroom and into the main living space. This will require buying a new desk where we can enclose almost everything, for maximum child-proof-ness. We've ordered this desk and are waiting for it to arrive.

4) Get everything else out of the second bedroom. This includes roughly 20 boxes of stuff, as far as I can see from this chair. Find places to put all this crap.

5) Paint the nursery "bayou" blue with white trim. (It only took us about 15 seconds to agree on the color, surprisingly.)

6) Get a crib, mattress, dresser, bookshelf, sheets, lamp, curtains, toybox, etc. Assemble. Declare it a nursery. Put baby in it. Take a nap.

7) Buy a kitchen table and chairs. Stop eating our meals on the couch with tray tables, as we've been doing for four years now.

8) Buy a new TV stand so we can enclose all the A/V components, again for child-proof-ness. Bill is actually building this new TV stand right this very minute. And of course, Bill being Bill, it had to come with a new 58" plasma TV, which is being delivered on Monday. This reminds me of the time Bill wanted an Xbox 360, which had to come with a new TV (the one we're now retiring) so he could see the games better and a new couch so his neck didn't get tired while he played. That was the most expensive Xbox ever.

Here are the "before" shots.

This is our current "office". It's a good thing P$ isn't mobile yet because there are a million ways for a baby to die over here. Nails all over the floor, a baby rattle on top of a surge protector full of chargers, a heavy laptop balanced half-way off a shelf, cords dangling everywhere just waiting to strangle an unsuspecting neck, various bullets sitting around, a bottle of boric acid to kill the roaches. Obviously this all has to go.



Here's where the new desk is going to go-- along the far wall. The dining room table will go roughly where P$ is laying. Feel free to take a moment to admire the Obama calendar, which will need a new home once the desk arrives. (And no, Mom, its new home will not be the garbage.)



This pile of boxes will hopefully evaporate overnight and magically become a nursery.



This is the TV we're getting rid of. I'm still not quite sure why. I think Bill's trying to sell it for $500. Anyone interested? It's a 50" LCD I think. Works fine.



Here's the kitchen. It's actually pretty much done for now, though if we end up staying here for a while we might do some renovating. I've whipped up some pretty marvelous culinary delights in it already this year.



I have this vision of myself sitting on the couch one rainy afternoon while P$ naps, looking at my neat and tidy home, thinking that I have nothing more pressing to do than cross-stitch or read a book because the laundry and dishes are done, bathroom and floors are clean, furniture is dusted, and bills are paid. I'll look across the living room and see a kitchen table with nothing on it, except maybe some place settings pre-staged for fancy effect. And then I'll refill my Ikea coffee mug and maybe watch some episodes of Lost on our new 58" plasma TV.