Dream Home
It looks like my boys and I might be moving.
Nowhere far. In fact, at a mere three blocks from our current locale, this may be the shortest move I’ve ever made, not counting the time I moved from one apartment to another down the hall, carrying all my crap from one place to the other, one laundry basket load at a time.
My head is still whirling as this came about pretty suddenly. One minute I’m firmly set on my decision to buy a house this summer and the next minute I’ve decided I may not ever want to own a home again.
There are lots of reasons I might not want to own a home — if not ever again, then at least not right now. First of all, given my price range, I would definitely be buying a house that needed a lot of (cosmetic at least) fixer-upping. That’s a lovely dream, me putting in new cupboards and hardwood floors with a smudge of dust on my nose, but considering that it took me a year of living in this current house before I managed to put up curtains in my bedroom, I think the more likely scenario is that I will live in dated, rundown squalor for months and years and will hate it every day and will hate myself for wasting my weekends spending quality ass time in front of my computer instead of painting or nailing or sawing.
Second of all, I’m really kind of a nomad. I always like the idea of settling down in one place, but really that’s just it, it’s only the idea that I like. I don’t necessarily want to move every six months (in fact, once a year seems my maximum), but I like having the option. In some ways my life is pretty unsettled. It’s not likely that I will stay at this job for more than five years and I hate to think that my future career potential might be limited by some house to which I am tied. I’m also unsure of my boys’ education situation at this point and there are schools on the other end of town that might prove more compelling once they are both in school. And who knows, I may even decide it’s time to try out a new city or state or country. The world is a big place and I don’t know that I’m ready to tie myself down to one small bit of it.
I think what really tipped me over the edge was having a playdate with one of my almost-six-year-old’s school pals. His mom has commented to me several times about how she’s worked so hard to make her house a home and how she has a natural affinity for turning a house into a home, blah, blah, blah, and so I was curious to see what, exactly, it is that makes a house a home.
So far as I could see, what turns a house into a home is a lot of clutter and knickknacks, which leaves me rather content to live in a mere house as clutter and knickknacks make me feel stressed out and not at all at home. But clutter and knickknacks aside, her home was very nice in that she had made very good use of the light and didn’t necessarily limit herself to the intended purpose of a room and as a result had created bright, comfortable spaces that served a variety of purposes regardless of the particular one you found yourself sitting in. The whole time I was there, sitting in her bright formal-dining-room-turned-cozy-family-play-room, I was thinking about my own house/home and how it might be different if it was my Dream Home.
For one thing, it would have more space. My boys share a small bedroom that is pretty much overwhelmed with toys. I implement lots of storage solutions for their puzzles and games and vehicles and train tracks (good god we have a lot of train tracks), but the problem is that their furniture alone barely fits. There’s not much floor space for bunkbeds, a play kitchen, an easel, a table with stools and three sets of storagey shelves (especially if you don’t want to block the lone window or the closet door) in a 10′x13′ room. My room, which is the exact same size, has the same problem. It’s even harder to squeeze a queen-sized bed, a big desk, a big bookshelf and a cedar chest into that space, especially if you want to have access to both sides of the bed, which I do, as crawling over my two year old when I need to get out of bed in the morning/in the middle of the night/after I put him down for a nap never works out well.
I’ve arranged both rooms to make the best possible use of the space, but still, they’re crowded. And in the case of my room, the room that doubles as my workspace, it’s often entirely inaccessible since my two year old still sleeps in my bed and would never take a nap if I was in there pecking away at my keyboard.
My Dream Home would have a large master bedroom that my boys could have. It would have space not only for all their furniture, but space to play in as well. And maybe if it was truly my Dream Home it would have enough space that I could create a dedicated art counter with all their craft supplies readily available instead of stuffed into a box that no one is strong enough to open except me. My Dream Home would also have a third bedroom so that I could have my own private, dedicated workspace. And, maybe most important of all (or maybe not, I don’t know, depends on my mood), my Dream Home would be at least a little bit shiny and new.
Shiny and new doesn’t necessarily mean shiny and new, but the thing is, I want a modern kitchen and I want a modern bathroom and I want a modern electrical system, with more than one outlet in a room and counter level outlets in the kitchen and NOT one that has a fuse box (yes, a fuse box, with actual fuses that have to be replaced if they blow) that resides outside (yes, outside, as in the perfect place to get yourself electrocuted if you needed to, say, change a fuse in the pouring rain). I also want walls that are smooth rather than covered by so many crappily patched holes that it’s hard to tell which parts are actual wall, and I want kitchen cabinets that are relatively new and not covered with so many layers of grimy, sticky torn contact paper that I feel like I need to wash every dish that comes out of a cabinet before I can actually use it. Sure, I added my own layer of shelf liner (although I chose to go with that nubby, non-sticky rubbery stuff instead of contact paper) but I can’t help but feel that the grimy nasty germiness of years gone by is slowly leeching its way up and onto my dishes and food.
So as I was thinking about all this it occurred to me that maybe I didn’t actually want to buy a house, maybe I just wanted a space that made me happy and the only way I could see that happening was to buy a house that I could recreate. And maybe if I didn’t buy a house and instead thought long and hard about what I wanted, I could seek that in a rental instead. Then I could retain my happy nomadic ways yet still have my dream home and not set up these horrible unreachable expectations about single-handedly remodeling a house, not to mention keep the lovely padding of a savings account with money in it, padding which would go away once I sunk all that money into a down payment.
It was a compelling line of thinking, especially since it resulted in the potential for instant gratification (no more waiting for summer) and since it allowed me to poke around at rental listing on craigslist. I told myself that I would not give in to any kind of scarcity thinking, that I would hold firm to my price and my requirements, that I am not desperate to move and there’s no sense in moving if I am only going to be unhappy in the new place (because I can be unhappy in my current place and spend a lot less money).
But then I found a place.
I’m not sure how it is in the rest of world, but here in Seattle we’ve seen a boom of townhouse development in recent years. In some ways I like this trend because old single family homes are being demolished to build denser multi-family housing that helps to provide options for families to live in desirable urban neighborhoods rather than contributing to endless suburban sprawl that is permanently removing much of the natural landscape surrounding cities. But on the other hand, the townhouses are often poorly planned and ugly, and they always offer this package of features that seems like it’s meant to be the suburban dream — stainless steel appliances, hardwood floors, granite counters, garage, yard, etc. — all crammed into a tiny little (poorly planned, ugly) space. While I definitely support dense urban development in the form of condos and townhouses, I don’t support housing that looks ugly and isn’t terribly human/neighborhood/planet friendly.
But these townhouses, aimed as they are at first time homebuying families, have always tempted me because they are in my price range. It’s a hard call. Do I choose the moneypit of an old rundown house or do I choose the shiny new eyesore townhouse? However, when the decision shifts from buying to merely renting, the choice becomes much easier.
Last Tuesday, obsessively peeking at the RSS feed for my craigslist search results, I saw a townhouse come up. The price was right, the neighborhood was perfect and the unit was brand new. I immediately called and made an appointment to see it.
The rental market in Seattle is pretty tight. Unless the unit is really expensive or in a far flung location, once it becomes available it’s usually only a matter of hours before someone signs a lease. I’ve called about plenty of brand new listings during my work day, only to have them already rented by the time I got off work. This time the unit wasn’t being shown until about 5:30 (and not until Thursday), which meant that I still had a chance (as long as I left work early that day).
The woman showing it made it clear that it was first come, first serve. The first person who handed her an application and a check for the first month’s rent would be the person who got the townhouse, so I was ready with rental, employment, credit history and checkbook in hand at precisely 5:30pm. And it’s a good thing I was, because there were four other people/couples/families waiting to the see the unit along with me and my boys.
I already knew it was beautiful because I had scoped it out on redfin and found one of the same group that was still listed for sale, but it was prettier (if smaller) in person. The very first thing we saw when we walked inside was a little half door leading to a secret hideout/Harry Potter cupboard under the stairs and I knew that was a good omen.
Without trying to be rudely aggressive, I raced through the rest of the house as fast I could and requested an application from the woman in charge. I was the first one done and then needed to walk through the house once again to actually see it, since my only thought had been getting the application submitted.
The whole townhouse is very nice, all the things I mentioned above with regard to the suburban dream as well as a few other small touches that make me really happy, like a gas range (oh to cook on gas again!!) and windows deep enough to comfortably seat a cat and how every outlet is not just an electric outlet but also has a cable jack, phone jack and ethernet port built in. The fridge — stainless steel with the pull out freezer drawer on bottom — is my dream fridge.
There are some things I don’t like about it as well — aside from the third bedroom, I’m not entirely sure there’s more space overall, and there’s no inside storage other than the cupboard under the stairs on the bottom floor (and the bedroom closets of course, but I was hoping for a linen closet on the top floor…and a pantry in the kitchen). But those don’t seem like reason enough to turn it down…or at least I don’t think they do…although maybe this is the kind of perfection I should be holding out for, I don’t know.
Regardless, I applied, I got approved, I signed the lease on Saturday and now I’m just waiting for my move in day. So I guess I shouldn’t say that my boys and I might be moving because we actually will be moving…unless I decide that I’m willing to sacrifice my rent payment…and I’m pretty sure I’m not going to. As expected, I am having total lessee’s remorse, mostly along the lines of worrying that my boys will destroy this place before our first month is done, but overall I’m glad. I keep having small realizations like the fact that in this new place the doors will actually shut AND open. No more warped doors covered with so many layers of paint that you can lean against them and leave an indentation. No more ancient door knobs that will leave me trapped in the bathroom in the middle of the night. It’s the little things, I tell ya.
February 5th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Congratulations - it sounds like a refreshing change!