Whew! This post has been a long time coming. As I mentioned before, I have been absent for an extended period of time due to our relocation. I don’t know if you can count moving a couple of blocks away a true relocation, but it sucked the life out of me either way. Where do I even start?

I really tried to get things ready long before our actual moving date. I wanted boxes to be organized so that the move into our new home would be fairly easy. I did not have support on this. “It won’t be a tough move,” my husband said. “We don’t have much stuff.” He was clearly only looking at the big items that he would have to carry. He forgot that a family of six living in the same place for five years accumulates a ton of crap. I spent a few nights before the big day frantically trying to get all of the laundry washed up. In true fashion, the dirty laundry conspired against me and multiplied itself with each load I washed. The night before, my husband insisted that we sit down and relax so that we were prepared for the day we had ahead of us. Don’t even get me started.

I was still doing laundry as the man and his friends were breaking down furniture and moving it onto the U-Haul truck. “We should have this all wrapped up in three hours,” he said, his friends nodding in agreement. Immediately, the theme song from Gilligan’s Island started running through my head on a continuous loop. That was the longest three hours I had ever lived through. It took not only all day, but several hours of the next day to get everything packed up and moved. And I still forgot to clean out one of the drawers in the kitchen. Not even the junk drawer. I would have been fine with leaving twine and take out menus behind. But alas, it was my lovely set of Chicago Cutlery knives that were left behind, along with all of my flatware. Bloody hell.

There was a one week period that we needed to stay at my mother in law’s, because the new place was not going to be ready right away. That was no problem. I could deal with a week. However, nothing in my life really follows the outline that I have mapped out. I received a call a few days before move-in with the most dreadful news – my home would not be ready until the following week. Wait….what?!? Let me tell you, I am a very particular person. I don’t adjust to living outside of my own home very well. My idiosyncrasies are sometimes too much for my poor mother in law to handle. I dreaded telling the kids, and waited until the day before our original move-in date to break the news to them. That didn’t go well at all. There were melt downs and tears and slapping (each other, not me) out of frustration. I can’t say I blame them. I was frustrated enough to have a meltdown myself. I made it up to them with a trip to Rebounderz, an indoor trampoline park.

A second week at my MIL’s went by when we received yet another call from stating that our unit would not be ready until the following week. This time, I went to talk to the front office manager in person. I could not continue living like a transient, with all my belongings packed away in storage. I needed a place to live, and I needed one now. Right now. We were given a temporary unit free of charge on the third floor for a week. Did you forget that I have four children? Just take a moment and imagine how well the folks on the second floor appreciated us.

After almost a month, we are finally settled into our own space. Boxes have been unpacked, beds have been put up, and lists are being made of the things we need to replace. The place we are living in is actually a condominium development. I never really understood the difference between the structure of a typical apartment and a condominium, and I received a crash course when moving my stuff in. Outside of upgraded amenities, the main difference is closet space. Apartments tend to be built with larger bedrooms and more closet space, but smaller common areas. At least this has been my experience. Condos tend to be the exact opposite. Our common areas are a really nice size compared to what we had before, but closet space leaves so very much to be desired. It is a struggle, and I am going to be leaning heavily on my favorite organizational blogs to make it all work for me. I will be back with updates soon!

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I have been living outside of my parents’ house for quite a while now, but I didn’t always feel independent. Moving out and then going back to your parents’ house to stock up on groceries when you are sure they’re still at work doesn’t count as independence. I don’t think I really felt independent until I left my home state of New York and moved to Florida. By that point, I was married with three children.

I have lived in Florida for over seven years and although I am self-sufficient for the most part, I don’t know that I feel like a grown up. I mean, I know I am grown. I have the arthritis and stray gray hairs to prove it. I still didn’t feel like a real grownup, though. You know, the kind that owns a house and takes kids to soccer practice. When I stop to think about it, I realize it has a lot to do with the whole house thing. My dwelling doesn’t belong to me. I am ashamed to say that I pay twice as much money to live in it as some people pay for a mortgage, but I still don’t have the freedom to paint an accent wall, or rip up the carpet and put in hardwood floors. And the more I think about that, the more it bums me out. But some not so smart choices in my younger days put me in a position where buying a house isn’t an option right now. As I once heard Steve Harvey say, most people spend their thirties fixing the mistakes they made in their twenties. He was really on to something there.

Being a renter has its advantages. I don’t have to worry when things wear out and need to be replaced. That’s what the management office is for. But there are also disadvantages to renting. The worst is probably the white walls and the overall drab décor that you can’t make any permanent changes to. That makes it difficult to create a space that is a reflection of who you are. When you initially leave the home of your parents, the idea of having your own space is more exciting than anything. It doesn’t matter if your bed is nothing more than a mattress on a bare floor, or if your dining room table is made from milk crates. It’s all yours. After a while, that excitement wears off and leaves you longing for dwelling that actually feels like a home, rather than some place you happen to sleep and eat.

Since I don’t own the place I live in, it’s hard to find the motivation to beautify it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a far cry from a dump. We have some decent pieces of furniture, or at least they were decent before children and cats got to them. But the place is really generic. I have seen model homes with more personality. Not a single one of my friends could walk into my living room and say: “Yep, this sure is Afsana’s place”. I wanted to change that. It would be difficult though. While my taste is more bohemian/eclectic (sometimes meaning a hodgepodge of crap that doesn’t really go together), my husband’s taste is much more traditional. So how could I keep things traditional enough to keep him satisfied, but funky enough to appease my inner flower child? Decisions, decisions. For the longest time, I tried to keep everything neutral. That way if we move, all of our stuff will match the new place, no matter what color the walls and carpets happen to be. But I hate coming home to a living space that just functions as a place to live.

Lusting over home decorating and DIY blogs has been my new hobby lately. After feeling more inspired to fix my space, I decided to start with the dining room. We have had a very nice table set, but the table and chairs needed some help after having owned them for five years. Jelly Bean and Moon Pie used the chairs as scratching posts when they were still kittens and left me with shredded leather, and the kids spilled some unknown substance on the table that destroyed the finish. I wasn’t really as angry about that as I claimed to be, because it gave me the opportunity to experiment and show a little of my personality. I knew that I wanted to make the set over completely, but my husband knows how bad my track record is when it comes to finishing large projects. I was determined to prove him wrong this time, and I did just that. I don’t want to give too much away just yet, because I plan to take you room by room through the changes I made. I hope to inspire anyone who doesn’t believe that you can make a rental home your own without losing your security deposit.

So stay tuned over the next few weeks (or months) while I share my home makeovers with you all.

I know I suck. I promise I have a good reason for being away. My family is in transition right now. We opted to move out of our old apartment when the lease was up, only to discover that our new home was not going to be ready for two weeks. We are sucking up space at my mother in law’s house right now, with no internet connection and basic cable. You can imagine the pain we feel right now. Thank goodness for books, right? I could probably blog from my phone, but I lose patience very quickly when trying to type out a post on that little bitty touch screen keyboard. Ain’t nobody got time for that. Anywho, I am still alive and kicking (if any of you were worried). I am just taking a small break. When I get settled into my new home, I will share the horror story of our move that resulted from our lack of preparedness and underestimation of how much crap we have accumulated over the past five years.

I will see you all soon!