A little change, a big difference

A little change, a big difference

Update: added photos of the new stuff

As Lisa planned in this post, we went to Ikea and bought some furniture. The past three days, we've been assembling and installing it.

It's amazing - just a few changes, but each of them makes a huge lifestyle difference.

My theory is that this is the best way to do home improvements: change one small-ish but significant thing at a time. That way, you really appreciate the difference it makes.

If you re-do a whole room from top to bottom at once, you get instant gratification, but it makes not much more difference than changing out one piece of furniture. If you one thing at a time, you get that wonderful experience over and over.

So the things we did over the past week:

• New bed frame - we went to Ikea and got this bed frame. It's wonderful - attractive, sturdy, easy to put together, and we no longer live on the floor like students! When you get up in the morning, you put your legs over the edge and stand up! You don't have to climb up off the floor! It's like we're adults! Hooray!
• Under bed storage - we got some plastic under-bed storage boxes from Ikea (2 of them to start). Nothing's in them yet, but they're under the bed, brimming with potential. :-)
  
• New garbage in kitchen - we replaced the kitchen garbage with a galvanized steel garbage can, one with a clip-on lid. Just from Home Depot. That cleared up the space beside the fridge, where we put a...
• New kitchen cart - on our trip to Ikea, we got this kitchen cart. We put it beside the fridge, where the old garbage can used to sit on an old sewing machine table. On the kitchen cart goes the microwave.

Now, the kitchen improvements have three profound and life-altering effects:

• massively more space on the kitchen counter - we had very limited counter space, partly because some of it's inaccessible, and some of it is holding stuff that we don't have cabinet space for. Also the microwave consumed a massive space. Moving the microwave suddenly more than doubles the available counter space, which is huge.
• electrical woes fixed - the microwave was plugged into the over counter plug. This plug is on the same circuit as all of the other over counter plugs, and the overhead light. Not a big deal, until you want to run the kettle and the microwave at the same time (which happens fairly often). Then the circuit breaker blows, and you have to make the long trek into the basement to reset it. This way, the microwave's on a separate circuit, and won't contend with anything.
• much more attractive - subjective, but true nonetheless. Moving the microwave off the counter massively declutters that side of the kitchen. Moving the garbage into an enclosed can cleans up sight lines. The kitchen cart matches the island we already had. The whole layout just works much better now.

Very fun. Just three purchases (none of them very expensive), and your life is changed in the bedroom and the kitchen, two of the most important rooms in the house.

That turned out great.

Lisa's gone this weekend back to Kitchener (back next week), so I'm sure once she gets back she'll have lots more things she'll want to do. In the meantime, I'm basking in the life altering effects of our new home changes. :-)

A New Year... The More Things Change... The More They Stay The Same

It's been a long haul since the new year actually started and updates have been few and far between, but now things are starting to get back to normal.

Early in January, we had a major family crisis to attend to... most of the people that read this blog will know what I'm referring to... all is well again and everyone is back where they belong :) (I'm not being obtuse on purpose, I just figure that I'm not posting all sorts of details on the internet for any and all to read!)

I spent much of January and a good part of February out of town, attending to our family crisis and I returned home last weekend with Jessica in tow. She's on reading week and we're enjoying having her home again!!

Another change that occurred over the last few weeks... Jess and Kyle broke up. Again, I'm not going into any details, just suffice it to say that Jess is doing fine... just a minor bump on life's road. She's a strong, resilient young lady and is moving forward with her life!

Things around FHH are fine... Shawn did a great job looking after all the furry retarded kids, the house and himself, in my absence. My goat babies grew while I was away and they no longer have the baby look... they are really starting to look more like adult goats. The dogs faired fine, even the neurotic Buddy dog... they were both happy to see me when I returned home :)

My sister's goats finally started popping out babies left, right and center... I did manage to see them a week or so ago and they are just adorable!! I would've liked to steal a couple under my coat and bring them to Ottawa with me, but some of the little buggers scream loudly when you pick them up!! Maybe next time I'll have to tuck a quiet one or two into my coat pocket! :)

Really makes me wanna have some goat babies.... who knows, maybe eventually... just not yet... we're not set up for the two we have, hardly!

We have a ton of snow again here... we had a ton.. then it all melted and now we have about the same again... thank goodness it melted in there or I don't know how we'd be managing these days!!

Now that I'm home again, I'm starting to be able to think about making plans again... plans that are farther in the future than about 5 minutes. This is a real accomplishment! I started making notes of how I want to rearrange some rooms... move some furniture... just generally change things so they WORK around here.

These plans also include going through some of our stuff again and reorganizing, getting rid of stuff we don't need or want and that sort of thing. We did a dramatic go through before we moved last summer, but there were some things that we kept "just in case" that it turns out are not needed and are just taking up space and cluttering our house.

I'm kinda excited to have plans again... it doesn't even matter at this point if they happen right away... just being able to think in that space again makes me happy.

Part of the plan includes us getting a bed frame for our bed. We had a bed frame before we moved, (we had made it, twas one of our first projects) but we decided not to move it with us. We decided it was time for something different and LIGHTER (it was way over engineered and very heavy!) but we so far are still sleeping on our mattress on the floor... you know, like students. *eye roll* Very OLD students.

After contemplating many options, we're considering buying a bed frame from IKEA... we still have to go look at it in person and decide whether we still like it or not, but at least its a start! For anyone interested, its this one.

It matches some of the other furniture and accessories we have and its a reasonable price. We'll see if it still appeals to us when we see it in person. A bed frame like that gives us the added bonus of under the bed storage, which is now just wasted space. Ideally, I would like to get some of the plastic under the bed storage boxes that IKEA sells and put all the sewing fabric in them and tuck them neatly under the bed. I think that would be a good fabric storage solution. Easy to get to, yet out of sight and out of the way.

See? Things change and yet, they are all still the same as always.

One more comment that to many of you will seem random and bordering on insane (my apologies!) and will make sense to a few others...

Team Buttercup Rocks! Yay Team! ;)

More stuff

Again, long time no update. Sorry about that.

I've been very busy with work, still working in the evenings and stuff. The ends of projects are a pain.

Lisa is back in Kitchener, although she was here on the weekend (big fun). I took Monday off of work and we cleaned the goat pen. :-)

It was a big dump of snow yesterday and I'm feeling sick, so I'm working from home today: it's kind of fun to program on the couch.

That's pretty much all the news. Everybody here is doing well (all the furry retarded kids and me, or am I included in the kids? who knows?)