It is the last Saturday in May of 2020. I just sat down for the first time ever in the extra room of our house. We have called this room the “extra room” and the “TBD room” since we moved in. The room could be a bedroom, but we do not need an extra bedroom. The room could be an office, but I like my workspace in the kitchen. The room could be a game room, but we like hanging out in the living room. We have yet to decide what to do with the space; hence, the reference of “TBD room”.
It is a nice large space, with a crummy closet. The room has a huge window that overlooks the front yard, my view of the road out front of the house is blocked by trees and the foliage around the trees. I would love to take out the closet of the room, and open the room to the main living space of the house, but that would mean one less bedroom. I never plan to sell this house, but obviously resale is much easier on a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house than a 2 bedroom, 2 bath house.
I am pretty sure the house, which was built in 1974, originally had this room to the main living area as I would like it to be. The fact that the second side of the double front doors of the house does not open, but clearly once did, and the REALLY old tile in the crummy closet are what make me think this.
The room contains all of the furniture that does not fit any where else in the house that I did not get rid of when we moved from the old house. There are two book shelves that do not match one another, one bookshelf is now staged with games and books the Little Chirp has read this past month, the other is cluttered with my cookbooks. In the center of the room is the table and chairs that we had in our old game room. I purchased the table and chairs to have a four person card table. Little Chirp used to sit and do his homework on this table in the in the old house.
On the wall that I am currently facing, as I sit in one of the chairs at the table, there is a hutch that I have had since around 2004. The hutch has red, white and blue puzzle piece shape hardware on the drawers and cabinets. The cabinets are now filled with board games, and the open areas of the hutch are now filled with family pictures. To the left of the hutch, we hung all of my running medals. I usually hate anything that is cluttered, but the pictures on the hutch and the medals have a cluttered look, and I really like both.
To my left is an old green chair that got to come with us in the move because it folds out into a super comfy single bed. Above the old green chair is a set of Garfield pictures, which I love. One of the Garfield pictures is autographed by Jim Davis, and worth more than everything else in the room combined. On the wall behind the chair that I am sitting in, next to the crummy closet, is an old church pew. This was one of my mother’s prize possessions. It would make her happy to know that even when the room was filled with junk, the kitties liked to climb over everything to have a nap in the pew. She would be way less happy to know that her antique table is on the back patio with the cat’s food bowls on top.
To my right is the window that overlooks my front yard, and on each side of the window framed Astros posters hang. They are both prints of the Sports Illustrated cover that predicted the Astros World Series Championship in 2017. In my heart the Astros are forever World Series Champions. So spare me your comments on that.
The boys and I have been busy cleaning and organizing this room since 9 AM this morning. We just finished a bit ago. Nothing in this room matches, the table, pew, bookshelves and hutch all have totally different finishes. Even the ceiling fan has yet a different finish and weird, ugly green paint on the metal parts. The fabrics on the chairs the old green chair do not blend together. Yet this room is somehow perfect. Maybe the “TBD room” is now the “space of stuff I like room”.
I wished we had cleaned out this room the first day of quarantine. I like sitting in here.
By this time tomorrow, we will have unpacked every single box, and we will be completely moved into our little house. I never want to move again. All that is left is a box that the previous homeowners left us with stuff about the house, my filing cabinet and some miscellaneous boxes in the garage.
Brainy Bird is now vegging out on the living room couch, and Little Chirp is practicing kitty barrel racing with Trooper. Kitty barrel racing is a Storey family sport that we made up some years back. Each person gets to pick a cat, and then we put three cans in a triangle. The goal is to get your cat to run around the cans the fastest, directing the cat with a laser pointer. It always holds true that the person with Trooper as their cat wins. Despite being the largest, Trooper is somehow way more agile then his brother and sister kitties.
It is the little things in life.