To Buy a Bigger House or Not to Buy a Bigger House???

Earlier today I was contemplating how awesome it would be to move to a bigger house.

 My family currently is tucked up in a 1,500 square foot 1950-something split level house with a one stall, tuck-under garage. The upper level has 2 bedrooms a bathroom, our living room, kitchen, and dining nook. The lower level has another bedroom and bathroom along with a family room, and of course, the garage.  It sounds like a lot of space when I type it out, but it feels a little cramped sometimes. My boys share a bedroom, and I sometimes wonder if they would sleep better by themselves.                                             NOTE: THIS IS NOT MY CURRENT HOME! 

But then I look around and see how much of our space we don’t use well. Our downstairs family room is hardly ever used. We watch TV down there sometimes, but probably only a couple times a week. The lower level bedroom houses a treadmill and the printer. The downstairs bathroom… well, it is currently housing a few cans of paint. We use the shower strictly for washing the dog.

So why do I want a bigger house? I’m not using all the space I have! Sure, a few extra cupboards in the kitchen would be nice, but is it nice enough to pay more for a mortgage? At the moment, no. In the future (maybe if there is baby #3), perhaps. For now I’m going to enjoy the pounding of little feet outside the bathroom door. I’m going to enjoy the little shoes that clutter my small entryway. I’m going to enjoy my life and my home, because it is the one I have now, and it isn’t worth wishing away! 

Someday I will buy a new house. Maybe I'll buy the house that is pictured above, but today is not that day. 

I Dream of Gardens

Perhaps it was going up on a farm in eastern Idaho, driving the balers and the combines, that has embedded such a deep desire to start my own garden in the back yard, but it is very clear to me that there’s a difference between maintaining 1,000 acres of wheat and a 6x12 plot next to the boy’s cedar play set.

I have tried to start a garden since moving to Sioux Falls four years ago, but each time I go out back – trowel and iced tea in hand – I don’t know where exactly to begin. It may be that there’s a lot more precision involved in creating and maintaining a garden plot, and I’m not as familiar with that as I am with making sure that my lines are straight and that I don’t roll the swather into an irrigation ditch. My husband approaches such uncertainty with a very different spirit; if he doesn't know how to do something, he looks up a few videos on YouTube, gets on his work clothes (which he’s had long enough that the cardinal red college-themed t-shirt is barely hanging on to his broad shoulders and the two-sizes too large blue jeans look like he’s trying to smuggle items across an international border), and says, “Well, here goes nothing!” All that to say, when I approach a problem, whether it’s what to plant next to the squash or what my new business cards should look like, I want the end result to be perfect. Surprising, and I say that with chagrin, perfect is a frame of mind. If I never dig in the dirt, it doesn’t matter if I have the best trowel available at Home Depot, or the most wonderful iced tea recipe available on Pintrest (although that does truly help), I will never have a garden. So, as I write this, my disheveled-looking, Cuban cigar-smuggling, “get ‘er done” attitude husband is out buying a topsy-turvy tomato pot and three railing planters for my growing green thumbs. Now, if only I could cross my arms, blink my eyes and have the finished herbs, tomatoes, and peppers ready to devour. Wouldn’t that be perfect!