Our house feels like one of those children's picture slide puzzles where you move one square in one direction to move others culminating in a finished image, except we haven't got to the finishing point yet.
To think this home was roomy and comparatively empty when we moved in 15 years ago!
I am sick of it being in a state of chaos.
The bathroom, laundry and toilet are 1/2 complete, and the kitchen hasn't been started, but I have done the research and developed some plans ready to submit to a building company. It has been hard to find a firm/person willing to do this job, perhaps as it is retrofitting and also as there are new commercial jobs for the taking?
It is difficult to make the absolute most of the 2 - 2 1/2 hours that I get with the baby sleeping; alongside being available to the children, and trying to keep up with the housework. I often have to drop everything I have been doing with no guarantee of when I will be able to get back to it.
I am embarrassed by the mess / clutter / piles / dust / dishes / washing pile. It zaps my energy. It makes me sick.
As we are planning on renting the place out while we journey around New Zealand it needs to be finished so I am turning up the heat on myself and taking up the challenge:
To have the kitchen, laundry, bathroom and toilet finished by August 2013.
In the interim I needed to take the stress off myself for the state of affairs so I posted the notice above on our front and back doors. Any feedback has been positive, from stories about people who move every few years as a discipline to sort out their stuff, to general support and understanding of how messy a project this is alongside running a household.
It was this post actually that got me thinking about simplifying specifically to raise the capital to travel. The reality is that we can't take it all with us (on the trip or after life) so it's worth seeing how much less we can live with and still be happy. The other side to having less, is that there is less to store while we are tripping around; and less to worry about. That's the idea anyway.
