Getting Settled

With Andrew passing his thesis defense the reality of our staying in the same place for the next few years has begun to sink in. To celebrate Emily and I have spent the last two weeks going through the closets in our house and unpacking! Andrew and I have had things in storage for so long that we figured we would hold off another year just in case we were moving on from the latest home. 

The process for many of the closets has been the same; throw away all boxes (I have kept every box for every thing we own for quicker and no think packing. I’m counting on being able to handle finding new boxes in 3-5 years from now). Open boxes and see what is inside. Get rid of stuff that we don’t care about, haven’t missed, and won’t need. Once everything is out of the closet, evaluate what goes back in for the best organization/easy access that will last for the next few years (!!!!!! long term thinking in relation to housing is something I have never done !!!!!!!).  

Andrew came home at the halfway point of cleaning out the under the stairs closet – the part where nothing is in the closet. His comment: “When I left this morning this room was clean.” I am proud to say by the time he returned the next day the room and the closet looked amazing. I’m paricularly proud of that little space. I found lots of kitchen items that I’m excited to use again and located perfect homes for them in our kitchen. I got rid of a ton of stuff and boxes that took up a lot of space. I organized the closet to hold our few items of long term storage in the way back, our 72 hour kits and other emergency supplies in an easy grab location, and lots of room for our food and water storage. That space went from so full that we would throw something in and shut the door as fast as we could with lots of effort in hopes it wouldn’t fall back out, to walking space inside it. I’m in love with how empty this closet is and will only let increase in fullness with food storage. I took these pictures before I put all of our food in. Now the shelves are full and it still looks great. I do look inside at least once a day to marvel at how nice, empty, and permanent it is in there.  

 The linen closet is also complete with lots of empty space and the office closet is well under way. I’m saving the upstairs hall closet for last because there are two large boxes that we’ve never unpacked and I want to install shelves in it to make it more usable.