Progress

We made a lot of progress on Sadie’s room this weekend. I’m very proud of what we have accomplished. The old couch was taken to our large pick-up zone (it took D nine trips) and we found a solution for our dresser. The room is now filled with black garbage bags that are full of recycling, garbage and donation items. It was bumpy at the beginning because we both had a hard time making decisions about what we wanted to keep. By the end I was determined to get rid of everything. The reality is that the storage situation in our condo sucks but at the same time, once we were going through stuff, it hit me that we really didn’t need any of it. As for the dresser, that was the one thing that we were both sad to give up. We had bought it when we lived in our apartment and when we moved to the condo we realized it was too big for the master bedroom so we put it in the spare room. What we ended up doing was taking the doors off of Sadie’s closet (sliding doors) and we put the dresser inside it. It fit within an eighth of an inch so we were very lucky. Now we have a huge amount of space for clothing – both ours and hers. Unfortunately we have lost the ability to hang items in the closet but in reality most baby clothes belong in drawers and not on hangers. Since I’m the handy woman around the condo, once Sadie is here, I plan on raising the shelf enough that we have storage space and room for hangers. Until then, this will have to do and if there are any dress clothes that need hung up they can go in our closet.
This brings me to a small rant about the condo. I can’t believe how many people have asked if we’re going to move!! It’s like they can’t imagine us raising a child downtown or in such a small space and I’m so sick of justifying our choice to stay. However, at the same time, when we went to our cousin’s shower we were a bit bummed when we saw the size of her SIL’s house. We felt like “we could never have that” but when we got home we found a house for sale on her street that was $50,000 less than the current list price for units in our condo. So yeah, we CAN afford that however we are not prepared to trade the convenience of where we live. We are not prepared to spend up to 3 hours (on a good day) commuting to work and home. In a very lazy way, I also have no desire to shovel snow or maintain yard work. I love that when my roof leaks I can fix it by sending an e-mail with no contractors or quotes or additional money out of my pocket. Yes, there are perks to those pesky condo fees.
So yes, we’re staying. I think about people living in Manhattan and pretend I’m one of them. Our place is small but big enough for what we really need. No, we can’t store all of my childhood toys or every playbill x20 to every show we’ve ever seen. One day we’ll move but not now and when we do, it may be to a 3 bedroom condo. I have to admit, I love the lifestyle!