Time to move in

Kristen and I had a realization a couple weeks back: We’ve lived in this house nearly two years and, in some ways, we never moved in.

• There are a lot of boxes in the garage filled with stuff we don’t need, but never took the time to toss or give away.
• Since we moved into this house we’ve bought nearly no furniture. We’ve had things we’ve used from previous places we’ve lived, but nothing for here.
• All of the walls are still “rental apartment white”  and bare of things hung up even though the landlord said we could paint and do whatever.

In short, we’ve lived here for two years but never fully made it our home.

With baby #3 on the way in February, plus a rental relationship we actually enjoy, we know we aren’t going to move any time soon.

About Southern California living: There’s a misconception that all of Southern California is a horribly expensive place to live. This hasn’t been our experience at all. It’s not cheap– but it’s not unlike any metropolitan area we’ve lived. (Chicago, Detroit) Renting a 3 or 4 bedroom house in a safe neighborhood is going to be expensive in any big city. When we look at our total housing budget for our house in Romeo, MI compared to our house here, it’s probably only 10-15% higher. How? We pay a lot more in a lump sum to rent but that is made up for in smaller bills in other areas. We don’t pay property taxes, renters insurance is a lot cheaper than homeowners, and our utilities are about 33% of what they were in Michigan. Of course, if we lived in a beach neighborhood or a super nice suburb it’d be more expensive. And if we compared square footage to square footage it wouldn’t be the same as our house here is about 50% of the overall size of our house in Michigan. But it is a little bit of a myth that all of Southern California is crazy expensive to live in.

Our “make a rental feel like a home” plan:

• Buy a deep freezer for the garage so we can store up on stuff better.
• Paint the living/dining rooms, finally hang some pictures in those spaces.
• Buy a new sofa/love seat for the living room.
• Build a bed frame for under Paul’s loft with storage underneath. (He stopped sleeping in his loft and has slept on a mattress on the floor for about a year!)
• Install a wall of storage cabinets in Megan’s room. (Since she’ll be sharing with Tres.)
• Spend a little time and money sprucing up the front of the house landscaping-wise and get more serious about the backyard garden.
• Get a nice grill so we will be able to enjoy our patio area a bit more in the warm winter months to come.

It’s really not a lot. But the hope is that we’ll be able to do a little here and there that will make this place feel like home for the next couple of years.