Yodelea-hee-hoo!

Actually, I need more space…do read on…

After something like three and a half days worth of unpacking and reorganizing, I can now finally say that I’m completely and totally unpacked of everything that I brought down from Michigan…and really, this should be the last of it! Sadly, it’s mostly books that I had to tuck away in a box in the closet, but with a few doo-dads here and there for each room, I took the opportunity to actually shuffle some things around at the same time and, well…

There just isn’t enough room in this here apartment anymore!!!
The scary part is that I don’t exactly have a small apartment, either, but between my ever-increasing accumulation of stuff and the inevitable quandry that someday I might not be living alone, I just need more room for anything and everything that might need to reside in this space one day. I’ve even been doing pretty good with not keeping magazines that I’m not going to read and actually throwing stuff away when the time comes; I’ve got a nice pile of stuff to put up on eBay later on this week that’ll hopefully bring in a few dollars, otherwise all of that’s going to the dumpster, too…but still, it’s just not enough.

Mostly I need more room for storage because right now some of my living spaces are having to be used for boxes and whatnot, and that’s part of the problem. The thing is, I don’t like the idea of renting a storage closet somewhere and having to drive if I want to look through a box at three in the morning! At this point just about every room in this place, though, is at its capacity – the kitchen could maybe fit one or two last appliances that I haven’t bought yet…but we’ve already experienced that the fridge is barely large enough to fascilitate the preferences of two people; I’d really like to throw another couch in the living room so that we don’t have to wheel over chairs when guests come over; the bedroom and bathroom are shaky at best, and it would be interesting to see where anything else could go across the board! (…don’t get me wrong – I’m up to the challenge, it’s just going to be tight…)

I think the thing that gets me the most is the lack of room in my office. While I was in Michigan last week, I spent a considerable amount of time cleaning up my old office in the basement and although it was absolutely freezing, at least there was room to walk around and stuff! There was a couch, a TV, plenty of shelf space for books and CDs and reference materials, space for people to sit around and collaborate ideas and whatnot – I want to get away from this tiny cubicle with just enough room for the computer desk and some cabinets that I have now and back to an office that I can actually feel like being productive in…and yes, I do think that it’d help me to be more productive, too. An appropriate working environment will do wonders compared to my bedroom, where I write most of my stuff now!

So in closing, I think that the search for a new house is back on, albeit a little slower than before. My agent still wants to put us into a $200,000 house that is absolutely gorgeous, but I don’t want to drive myself absolutely crazy trying to make the payments every month. I’m beginning to look at some other areas a little farther away from New Tampa – hell, maybe I won’t even need to work for this same company in a couple of years! – and if a ten or fifteen minute commute will save me $50,000, then bring it on. I can tell that the money thing is going to be a struggle right up until the end, but you can’t tell me that every single person who buys a new home down here has $15,000 waiting in the bank for down payments and closing costs…I think it’s time for these guys to stop jerking me over and work with me on this one… 😛

In the meantime, though, I’ll be over there digging through that pile of file folders… 🙁