We’ve been powering through the Christmas movies, too. We’ve made it through Elf, A Muppet Christmas Carol, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Santa Clause, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and the second Prep and Landing. The movies are even more fun to watch now that the tree is up.

Ah, yes, pictures–

Before…

After…

Tonight, I was browsing Pinterest and Jesse was playing Angry Birds. (Actually, we don’t always do those things, but we were both feeling pretty brain dead tonight.) I found this, or re-found it, as I’ve seen it before:

Naturally, I began to sing my best Lionel Richie impersonation. That’s when I learned that Jesse had never heard that song before.

Obviously, there was only one proper course of action at that point. I loaded the song in Spotify, cranked up the volume, and lip synced it to Jesse, while performing an interpretive dance complete with air guitar and looks of longing.

And that’s a pretty typical weekday night around here.

It was bliss.

When I came home, my house–which hadn’t acquired any more things since I had left–felt stifling, overwhelming. Full. When I went into the closet to get food for the cats, I felt claustrophobic, as if a tidal wave of my junk was towering over me, ready to crash down at any instant.

We used to live in a 900 sq. ft. apartment, and we were just fine. Then, we got an 1,100 sq. ft. apartment. Then, we moved into our house. With each move, we got rid of things…and then we get new things to fill up the space.

Also, put a couple with mild hoarding tendencies on a very tight budget, and things get interesting. Stuff becomes hard to let go of, because you don’t necessarily have the money to replace it. Suddenly everything is: We could fix this broken thing one day and then we wouldn’t have to buy another! or, One day we might really like this picture again and want to put it back on the wall! or, my favorite, Someday, these jeans might fit again, like they did in college!

Now, I’ve finally reached a point where I don’t care if we can’t replace the stuff. I just want it gone. I need the space, not for more things, but for the space itself. I need less clutter and more room to mentally spread out. I want the serenity that comes with a neat room where everything is in its place because everything has a place. I want to keep things because they serve a purpose or they are meaningful or they bring beauty or joy to our lives.

I started with the closet, where I found such useful things as attachments for a hair dryer that died in 2009. Those went straight into the trash. A pile of clothes and nicknacks went into the give-away/sell pile (who am I kidding? I don’t have time for a yard sale–they’re going to Goodwill). I moved on to the pantry, where I threw away two garbage bags full of stuff that had expired (oh, the shame–pancake mix that expired last year? I don’t even use pancake mix). Today I’m going to tackle my office closet.

Cleaning things out is quite a blast. It feels good to simplify, and already our house feels a little lighter, a little more manageable. I’ve found that getting rid of things can be as addictive as keeping them.

I hope I can hold on to this habit, though, over the other one. In the meantime, if you are in need of any junk, you are welcome to some of mine.

Dining room wall. As of 7:45 p.m., no leak found. Everyone very confused.

I posted something on Facebook last night bemoaning our status as homeowners. This was exactly two minutes after discovering our dishwasher (or something) was leaking through the wall into the dining room. My status was, “Home ownership: Worst. Idea. Ever.” What I really meant was: “GAH! OUR DISHWASHER IS LEAKING INTO OUR DINING ROOM! HOLY STINK, WILL IT NEVER END?”

There were a lot of great opinions flying around, so I thought I’d take some time to consider–in a less emotional moment–my actual thoughts on owning a home.

First, a brief history of the Jesse and Erin Renting and Home Ownership Experience. We have rented a grand total of two apartments since we got married in 2004. The first was perfect. It was a second-story unit in a quiet complex, and we could sit at a table on our screened-in porch and watch ducks at the nearby lake. There were huge oak trees, several lakes, tennis courts, a fitness center, a couple pools, the works. We took evening walks around the lake. We were close to downtown Orlando, so we went to farmer’s markets and the library and had picnics and went to art shows and generally loved where we lived.

Our second apartment was, shall we say, not perfect. It was near the university up here and had low ceilings that made it feel rather cave-like. We were surrounded by students who loved to party on Wednesday nights and would scream drunkenly from their balconies at 4:00 a.m. and play bad music at ear-splitting levels. (Wednesday! Wednesday!) The air conditioner didn’t work and in the summer our apartment wouldn’t get cooler than 80 degrees–even though our power bill one month was $160 (for a two-bedroom teensy apartment). To top it all off, after a big rain the ceiling leaked and grew mold. The apartment complex sent out a special mold-removing person, who just sprayed bleach on the mold. Around this time, Jesse got terribly ill and had to take two rounds of antibiotics to recover. (Hmm.) Finally, we could take no more and requested to be released from our lease. We were denied, because the complex manager said our apartment had never had mold. The mold “expert” said it wasn’t mold.

“What was it?” I asked.

Oh, she said, just “something” that grew on the water stain. Just something black. That grew. On a water stain.

She refused to let me see the service records, as they were “private.”

Needless to say, I kept at it until we were finally out of our lease.

This was the end of 2005. House prices were skyrocketing, and everyone said they’d only be going up. Buying a house was a good investment. You could expect at least four percent growth in equity every year, and probably more since our area was growing so quickly. The house we ended up buying had jumped in value probably $40K in the past year.

So, we sunk a bunch of money (an investment) in the house and were blissfully happy at being Real Adults–home owners.

For a while, it looked as though we’d made a smart move. In the year following our purchase, our house value went up probably another $20K or so.

And then 2007 happened.

Now, we still owe less than it’s worth, but gone is the money we put into it, gone is the theoretical money we never actually had but still felt like we had (no, we didn’t take out an equity line or anything stupid–sorry if you have an equity line; I’m just saying it would have been a dumb move for us in our situation…okay, I’m done trying to be politically correct and non-offensive. I’m tired).

Since owning the house, we have:

• Fixed the AC.
• Replaced the water heater.
• Put in a backyard privacy fence.
• Poured plenty of money into fighting (unsuccessfully) an endless succession of weeds; mowed and (sporadically) watered the grass for five years; planted at least four trees that later died; planted a grand total of two trees that have so far lived (knock on wood); planted and then killed two vegetable gardens (shopping at the farmer’s market all season would have been cheaper).
• Bought a refrigerator and a new microwave and a lawn mower and a weed eater and a wheel barrow and a million other “necessities.”
• Had a washing machine donated to us (I know it didn’t cost us money, but we would have had to spend money if we hadn’t had super-kind friends with an extra washing machine).
• Shampooed the carpets, painted the walls, cleaned every inch of it many times (but not as many as we probably should have).
• Paid a ton of interest on our mortgage every year (even with our super-low rate).
• Paid taxes and flood insurance and homeowners insurance every year.

Keeping a house is hard work and requires a ton of money and free time. At first, I dreamed about all the improvements we could make–new kitchen counters, a bigger back patio. Now, I just want things to stop leaking or breaking or falling apart. Everything seems like a time bomb: I look at the toilet and think, When are you going to turn on me? And the roof. And the heater. And the oven. I could go on.

Did I mention that one night, just as we were drifting to sleep, our ceiling fan fell on us?

Yeah.

Well, not that it couldn’t happen to renters, but still. You’d have someone to call whose role it was to replace said fan. And AC unit. And dishwasher. Et cetera.

I once thought renting was a waste of money. But now I’m starting to wonder how much money we’ve wasted on this house, when all this time we could have been wasting it on renting. It’s not about the money, though, not exactly. We have the money. We’re not going into debt over this stuff. This is just not what I really want to be spending the money on right now. And frankly, it’s not what I’d like to be spending time on right now.

Well, ere I get too gloomy, how about some upsides?

• We got to paint the walls crazy colors. Like purple.
• If our ceiling gets mold on it, we won’t have to wait around for weeks for an apartment complex’s crazy “mold expert” comes to pronounce it “not mold.”
• No crazy college parties next door.
• No security deposit to worry about. (Ha. Unless you count that 20%.)
• The insane hope that one day the housing market will magically be what it once was and we’ll get our money back.
• The psychological stability of feeling a sense of ownership over this place. Warts and all.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that being a home owner is lovely. And awful. Depends on when you ask me.

But, on Facebook, just after finding yet another problem needing major repair, you’re probably going to get Grouchy Home Owner Erin.

Sorry about that. Check back later!

Ha, ha.

The other day, we were driving and talking and pondering and it came to us—our vision for a small group. Exactly what we’ve been looking for. I said to Jesse, “You’re not seriously suggesting we start a small group, are you?”

He said yes.

So, here goes nothing.

See, we’re about ten hours away from home. We’ve never been home here, but the closest we’ve come was when we had a close-knit community of people who would drop by our house on their way home from work, just because. People we ate our leftovers with, people we watched dumb TV shows with, people we helped move across town. (Sad day.)

In Florida, Jesse’s family used to take every holiday—even the minor ones—as an excuse to get together. We never wondered what we were doing for Easter, say, or St. Patrick’s Day. We were seeing family, of course. Even if we didn’t head over to Daytona to spend the day with his aunts, we were seeing his sister, his cousin, my parents. Someone.

When you’re around family, you’re home. It doesn’t matter where you are. When I spend the weekend in Charlotte with my aunt, I’m completely relaxed. I know I’m home, because she’s there, because I am accepted simply because of who I am, not what I’ve done or failed to do, not what I’ve said, or what I believe, or what I do not believe.

That’s what we want, and that’s what we’re going to try to create in our small group: family. We want a few couples near us who don’t have family close by, who don’t feel connected and integrated into a tight community. We want them to come over for dinner. We want them to come over to watch American Idol. We want them to drop by unannounced. We want to know what we’re doing for St. Patrick’s Day. We want to see if it’s possible to create a unit, a little knot of people, who love each other just for who they are, not what they do or believe or say.

Maybe it won’t work. Maybe no one else is looking for a family. Maybe we’re the only ones.

But maybe we aren’t.

I suppose we’ll just have to see.

One day before the semester began, I tore through the house, disinfecting everything, sweeping all the floors, mopping, vacuuming, shampooing the carpets, washing all the laundry and linens…I even bleached the litter boxes and cleaned the washing machine. Our house sparkled. Unfortunately, Jesse was still sick, so I couldn’t have anyone over to show off my clean house.

No matter. Jesse slowly, slowly got better. One evening, I was making a pot of pasta with leeks and realized I had enough to feed a little army. Since a little army was not available to us, we called our friend Jessica, who lives just down the street, and she braved the potentially icy roads to help us eat the pasta while it was still fresh. On the side, we had a baguette that was so fresh I had already helped myself at least twice to bits torn off here and there.

Then the semester started, and I was off running. My office at school now has a picture on the wall and another lamp with enough soft light that I can keep the overhead fluorescents off. The light is so soothing and sweet in there, and if I keep the door almost closed the room gets nice and toasty warm. The only thing missing is a nice big mug of tea. I think I’ll work on solving that one.

What a lovely time of the semester. Everyone’s doing well. We’re all getting along splendidly, and no one’s GPA is in danger. My ENG 101 class seems filled with people eager to talk, and with some seriously interesting things to say—what a fabulous combination! I can’t wait to see how the classes develop and grow and morph.

To celebrate the first day of school, Jesse and I ate dinner at Cracker Barrel on Wednesday. Maybe it was the cold. Maybe it was the ice. But both of us just wanted the warmth and kitschy atmosphere of that restaurant. We just wanted to be surrounded by people who were on their way to somewhere else.

After classes on Friday, I took off for Charlotte to spend the weekend with my aunt. We stayed up late talking. We ate good food. We ran errands. We went to a farm in South Carolina to buy milk. What a perfect, casual weekend.

Now I’m back home, and I’ve got a bit of a breather before jumping back into classes midweek. I need some extra rest, as I’ve got a tickle in my throat that seems threatening. I’ll work a little, nap a little (hopefully), read a little. There’s Kalua Pig in the crock pot—a pork butt that’s been slowly cooking since before I went to bed last night. It’s making the house smell delicious. The house with its shampooed carpets and clean washing machine. Aaahh.

Jesse has been laid out flat by some bug he came down with right after New Year’s. And our health insurance is different this year, so he’s resisting a doctor’s visit because of the cost. So, he will suffer along here for a few more days and cave next week if there’s no improvement. He wakes up coughing and can’t stop around 4:00 every morning when the NyQuil wears off. I wake up with him. I get him a glass of water. I bring him a tablespoon of honey. I beg him to agree go to the doctor the next day. I settle for his taking another dose of medicine.

I’m very tired.

Today I’ve got big plans to clean the house, really clean it. The litter boxes need to be taken outside and scoured. The floors need mopping. The carpets need steam cleaning. Everything needs to be disinfected. The linens need to be changed. Perhaps the sparkling-clean environment will help Jesse recover more quickly. But at least I will be starting the semester with a clean house, a clean slate–and isn’t that the beauty of college, that every four months you get another crack at it, you get to start over?

See, I’m used to self-cleaning ovens. Lock the thing, twist a couple knobs, and voila–an oven that cleans itself. I cleaned my apartment oven once in college, and it has literally taken me nearly ten years to recover from the fumes. After college, we were never really in the same place long enough to properly gunk up an oven. However, we’ve now been at our house for five years. (This is possibly even more embarrassing than those closet pictures.) Finally, I decided it was time to man up (woman up?) and buy some oven cleaner and get to work.

The oven cleaner I bought today was labeled “Fume Free.” I thought, perhaps, in the decade since my last oven-cleaning attempt the cleaners had lost those “You’ve probably got about two hours to live” fumes. I was hopeful, optimistic. Plus, I’d had a fairly strong cup of coffee this morning while out with a friend, and I was feeling rather heady and ambitious. I could clean my oven with fume-free cleaner. I could bust that gunk right out of there. The smell wouldn’t bother me, no sir.

Well. In case you’re not familiar with oven-cleaning products, let me assure you that “Fume Free” is not a label you should take very seriously. If this stuff is fume free, I’d hate to smell the fume-y type. How could it possibly get any worse? I mean, honestly, you breathe this stuff and just know you’ve just shortened your life.

But, I powered on. There were two options to my cleaner: the quick one, and the “deep cleaning” one. I figured I probably needed the deep clean, but I thought I’d try the quick one first just in case.

Nope.

I was supposed to leave this stuff in the oven for two hours. The house was quickly smelling rather toxic. I looked at my cats. Two hours? I opened the windows and took Oliver and Gracie into the bedroom and shut the door. I’d just wait it out.

I managed an hour and then gave up. I put on some rubber gloves and picked out a rag I wouldn’t mind throwing away. I wiped down the oven. I wiped and scrubbed and rinsed and scrubbed some more. Some of the gunk came out. But it really didn’t look all that much cleaner.

I threw away the rag, and then took the trash to the bin outside. I opened more windows and turned on two fans. I kept Oliver and Gracie locked away in the bedroom, and then I retreated here, to my office. It’s forty-nine degrees outside and almost all my windows are open and fans on full-blast, trying to push as much of the smell (which is certainly giving me cancer as we speak) outside.

That being said, I’m fairly certain I’m never cleaning an oven again. If one gets too gunky, I’ll just buy another. A self-cleaning oven. I don’t care how much it costs.