We are preparing for a house renovation to make our first floor more livable for just me and my husband in our new empty nest lives. We're bringing our bedroom downstairs, the laundry room upstairs, and converting a small room into a bathroom with a walk-in shower. The goal is for us to be able to stay where we are as we age and stairs become problematic, and we're doing the work early while it's easier and we can afford to.
The kids' rooms upstairs will stay as they are for a few more years as people come and go from college, and our bedroom will become a guest room. That whole second floor needs some work too, but that won't be for a while.
We're also improving our first floor powder room, and having a simple tool room space put together in the basement where I use my bandsaw so I can have better lighting and a less spooky experience down there when I need to cut something out.
We've chosen fixtures and drawer pulls and cabinet stain. Windows have been ordered. While whole areas are being gutted, new wiring is going to happen that will put light switches in more reasonable places. Plans have been drawn up and tweaked and tweaked again. We await permit approvals. We've picked out some cool tiles.
It won't look like much of a change from our kids' point of view (which is good since they tend to not like change), because neither of the converted rooms were places they ever used. Our new bedroom will be in the space that was my home shop, and the nook where the new bathroom will be was more of an inadequate guest space. The most notable change for them will be the butler's pantry--which we've used for years as a craft supplies space--will be gone.
This was the most beautiful and organized the craft area space ever looked back when I first put it together in 2010. We could actually open the table and work on projects there when the kids were very small. Now imagine that same space with an extra set of shelves filled to the brim on the right wall, and tubes and paper and boxes piled thigh deep on the entire floor. I don't think I was ever inspired to photograph the area at the height of the storage crisis. Now it is empty.
Empty!
The tricky thing is not simply moving things out so work can be done, it's deciding where those objects will go since they can't go back. The craft area/butler's pantry will be fitted for laundry and a linen closet. The nook will be a bathroom, so none of that furniture would have a home.
Which means we've been engaged in a ruthless level of clearing stuff out of our house. We have too much stuff.
That happens whenever there is so much going on that there isn't time to thoughtfully edit what's in our immediate environment. When there were kids at home, life was a constant shuffling of stuff. I'm not dealing with anything in the kids' rooms or closets--that's a project for when they have spaces of their own to move into later--but the renovation deadline gives Ian and me motivation for addressing boxes and piles and bags that have cluttered every corner for years.
Some of this sorting process has meant completing projects that have been put off too long. I've felt bad that Ian's army awards have collected dust on various shelves since he got them. I finally organized the medals and coins into frames, and put all the certificates and flags, etc., into a single storage box.
The rest of the army things we are still working on. Ian retired in 2020, and during Covid not only did he not get a decent sendoff, he didn't have a way to return his gear. It's been stashed wherever it would fit in various spots all over the house, so we recently consolidated the army things into a single pile. I have not missed how hard it is to contact anyone in the Army when you need to. Lots of messages, lots of voicemail menus to navigate, still no luck figuring out what they want back and where to take it. But it needs to be gone in the next few weeks, so cross your fingers for us.
For a lot of things moving out of downstairs rooms, we've had to clear upstairs space for those things to go. The bulk of that has meant an honest clothing purge. That's been overdue for a long time, but it can be hard. Admitting outfits will likely never fit again is a bit of a defeat, but I'm realizing it's worse to see them in the closet and feel bad than to have them go to someone who can use them. I got rid of two large bags of clothes and can finally get everything in my dresser. I figure a few sentimental keepsakes are okay, but they now live in garment bags in the attic.
Most of what we give away I do through a local Facebook group called "Buy Nothing Bay View" which was started several years back to prevent things from ending up in landfills. Most of the time when I put up a post with a picture of something on my porch I want gone, it disappears within a matter of hours, sometimes minutes.
Among the sentimental items I chose to donate was a long coat my grandmother bought me back in college. She knew I mostly lived in t-shirts and jeans which went fine with my grungy winter jacket, but she wanted me to have something nice for when it was cold and I was dressed up. I loved this coat. I did wear it for a few years. It doesn't fit now. It doesn't make sense for a nice coat to hang in a closet when someone could be wearing it.
Same with Ian's suits. There is sentimental attachment to them because Ian's father died when Ian was only three, so my dad was the one who took him out suit shopping. My dad wore a suit and tie nearly every day, even at home. He once made a crack about how his tie was all that stood between him and barbarism. He loved a good suit. It meant a lot to Ian to have his help choosing some. We kept one for the attic, but passed the others along to a group that helps get veterans back on their feet.
