Spaced Out

There’s a saying that goes something like this:

“You don’t know what you got, till you lose it all.” Well, I’m here to tell you, you don’t know what you got, till you start packing. You see, we’re about to put our condo on the market and to get ready, we have to purge a bunch of stuff from the place to make it look less cluttered and more “generic” for the folks that want to come in and take a look.
The good news is that, overall, we didn’t really have that much stuff to take out. The other news is that most of the stuff we do have, belongs to Finley. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not doing a complete purge of things… just putting a few items into storage. Of course, we had to rent a second storage space to have room (that’s a whole different story). But when you start counting up clothes, toys, and books, Heather and I fail in comparison to a certain toddler.

It’s not a real surprise, but the reality of it starts to hit when you’re put into a situation where you have to pare down your life a bit. On the flip side, when we finally end up finding a house to move in to, we know we’ll have much more space for all our stuff. And if I know my girls, we’ll have much more space to fill with MORE stuff.

But the hunt for a new abode isn’t just about how we can fill it. For me, it’s about what’s on the outside as well.

More specifically, what kind of OUTDOOR space we can get. I grew up with a decent sized backyard and would love for Finley to have the same. Right now, in condo-land, our outdoor space consists of a tiny deck out the back and a walk down the street to a park. I’m hoping we can get enough green to put in a swing set and maybe a soccer goal or two.Of course, the more space we want the farther out in the boonies we’ll have to go. It’s no secret that the cheaper places with more

land can turn your commute into a Lewis and Clark expedition. We’re just hoping we can find some sort of compromise somewhere and maybe get lucky.

In the meantime, we’ll keep stuffing our storage units and hope someone will come along and give us a good deal for our place. And maybe, before too long, we’ll be able fill empty rooms in some house, somewhere, while Finley plays in the backyard.