California dreaming....

Ok, so I'm not dreaming of California, but I have that song in my head. I've been purusing reatlor.com ads and dreaming of houses in our area. It's really silly, since we won't be able to get a house until at least this time next year. But it's nice to see what's out there.

Jeff and I went to an open house on Sunday. It was a cute two-bedroom with potential for the attic to be a bedroom or two. It was definitely staged to sell, but it gave us something to think about. It gave us ideas for our condo, to get it ready to sell but it also tortured the heck out of me. I would LOVE a bigger place. This condo was perfect when it was just me, the cats and Murphy.

Well, that was more than two years ago. Now it's me, one cat, two pugs, a husband and a part-time daughter. It's CROWDED! It's especially crowded because now we have all of Jeff's stuff on top of mine. And I have a lot of junk. Yes, junk. I'm a supreme pack rat and it drives Jeff nuts. It drives me nuts but I keep collecting. I swear I have some sort of ADD or OCD. Is pack rat-itis a legitimate disease. If not, I have it. And I have it bad.

I finally organized all of my scarpbook stuff into neat containers that I got on clearance. Patterned paper, letters, stickers, embellishments and the rest are all organized and labeled accordingly. But it's ALL still out in the living room. Why? Because it's all in front of the closet doors and I can't get in it to put the stuff away. Even the carpet cleaner and vacuum are out in the living room and blocking the door. And it makes me antsy that I have it all out there, but that still hasn't motivated me to put it away.

And today, I found another bag of stuff that I hadn't gone through so I picked through it. Now the two scrapbook projects that were in that bag are sitting on our extra chair. When will it get put away? When Jeff gets tired of looking at it, he threatens to throw it out, I get defensive, we have a fight and make up and I decide that perhaps it's time to put it away. Or at least put some of it away. And then let my OCD/ADD kick in and let me get preoccupied with my beads, my crocheting, my reading or something else that takes up time, space and money.

It's a vicious circle that Jeff is trying to break. However, part of the problem is lack of space in thie 550-square foot home. And part of it is, again, that I have too much stuff.

So a bigger place with more storage would help. And then packing up to move to said house would help because it would force me to consolidate and throw stuff out. (Mostly because I don't want to pack it up and take it with us.)

But on a happy note, in my effort to discover the two projects sitting on the chair, I found the cards I needed to finally make out our thank you cards, now that I have our wedding wallets in that I'm sending to friends. And half of the thank you cards are done.

And the other half are spread out on my desk. In the living room. Blocking the closet.

Jeff must love me to put up with all of this.