Monday, February 21, 2011

Enjoying the Simple Things

Since Jeremy had president's day off, we decided to stay Sunday/Monday at the property to get some work done. The weather was soooo beautiful! We still have no AC hooked up, and we haven't been too worried about that, since it's been so cold, but this weather warming up has made us start to think about it. One of our first projects was to buy and install some ceiling fans in the living room and bedrooms. We went with Hunter fans for the bedrooms - they are just SOOO good! We have one in our bedroom now, and all you can hear is the sound of the air moving. We've slept in too many rooms with noisy fans to go cheap on them. Some cheap things are worth the savings, but not fans, in my opinion! The ceiling fan installations were a team effort: Jude handed me fan blade parts, I assembled them, while Jeremy did all the wiring and attaching to the ceiling. We went to bed pretty late that night, since they seemed to take a LONG time to install, esp. on funky mobile home ceilings!

We also had a wonderful friend who came and helped install the drywall in the bathroom, and what a blessing that was! It is finally finished! The drywall, that is, not the bathroom - we are still a long way from that, it seems. :) I'm now 7 months pregnant, and I'm no help when it comes to carrying heavy sheet rock, and not much help with anything involving bending over (esp. the getting back up part of bending over!) or lifting. The master bedroom now has a coat of primer and we have the paint purchased for it for next time we are out.

I decided that I was tired of all the packing and moving practically our whole house in order to stay out there any length of time, so Seth and I went on a little excursion to purchase lots of these items. We got the cheaper quality stuff (hello, Dollar Tree!), since we don't need it to last forever, and while I was against getting duplicates of things at first, I now think that if we got them cheap enough, we can just donate them to people who need them when we are finished with them. No more loading up the entire van; problem solved (mostly!).

I also decided to get some food while we were out that would be healthy, but last at least a month, just in case we weren't able to come out there for a while (if some of us were sick, or something like that). So, our little dorm fridge is packed with food! I'm glad it has a little freezer, too, so I can keep some meat out there. Packing food is the hardest thing for us, so that will save us some trouble.

It is amazing how much one appreciates simple things after doing without for a while. For example, I kept forgetting to bring a spare pair of scissors out there, and oh, the many things that are made more difficult by not having pair of scissors! Sure, one can sometimes substitute a knife, but scissors work so much better. :) Not only that, but we are really learning what bare necessities are for us. We don't typically bring things out there unless we have noticed a lack, so that the things we have out there are things that we specifically decided that life was better with them. I know that I have things in our current home that we probably wouldn't notice too much if they were gone, so it is nice to enjoy a little simplicity.

Lately I've been enjoying reading Habitat for Humanity's "How to Build a House" by Larry Haun. I definitely recommend that book to anyone interested in home building! It is written for the average Joe who knows NOTHING about building a house (yep, that would be us). If you think about Habitat for Humanity for a moment you'll see why it's a great book: they utilize lay volunteers (folks who don't know how to read a tape measure - yep, that's in the book, too), so the book is very detailed, yet simple to understand; they are building low cost housing (that's right up our alley); and they focus on simple to build, small homes (in reality, that is what we want, too). The book is very easy to read, and the author seems to have as his purpose convincing everyone that they can ACTUALLY build their OWN home - and I'm convinced we can do it! Good thing, too, since that was our plan from the beginning. :) The main difference we want in our home that most homes don't have is a bigger laundry room! Our family is really growing, and we already do lots of laundry, so I want space for more than one washer/dryer if we need it, places to fold, iron, sort, etc. But other than that, I don't want our house to be very big. I like how close our family is in our little mobile home we're preparing to move into. I will definitely want more storage space in our house, though, than the mobile home has!

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