The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time." –Abraham Lincoln
Since we began taking over handling everything for the Queen Mother, my husband keeps saying that we are making "small moves," because if we look at all that must be done, it is just too overwhelming. So, we just keep making small moves that will eventually work down the overwhelming, but as I see it, it will never really be done. Some things will be in the short term, like the estate sale and the selling of the house, but that only changes other aspects that are long term. It is always the long term that wears me down.We all three finally sat down and thought out room-by-room of our own house what we are keeping and what we are taking to Florida to add to the estate sale. To make most of the those decisions, we first had to decide on one in particular: What to do with one room in the house that really is not used, the guest room!
It has been my idea to move the Princess' daybed and trundle into the guest room, after it have been redone in a compromise of her taste and my rules, which include not painting the walls black, but I approve of black accents. That way she would still have the nightstand that she herself bought and her lamp. This would give her the most floor space so that she could use the trundle when one of her girl friends stay over and still be able to walk around the room, because they have to walk on the trundle to get to the door in her present bedroom. However, that would mean that we sell or store the guest room furniture.
My husband's idea was that she just use the guest room furniture and leave it as it is decorated already (although I still need to paint the window and match the faux paint pattern round the window—actually I need to paint all the trim as it is way too white for the decor and so there is that coming up). Right now, my guest room has a light peachy pink faux paint pattern with a wall paper border up by the ceiling. I also have two framed cross stitch artworks that I did some years ago of angels. So, it has a roses and angels kind of theme with a country flavored honey oak four poster bed and matching nightstand and mirrored dresser. (We have a matching wardrobe that will not fit in the room that we used in the nursery because it matched the crib and still have in the Princess' room today, but it may be going downstairs.) When I decorated the room, I wanted it to have a bed and breakfast feel even though the room was too small to really pull that off.
So, our conundrum is that that we now have the Queen Mother's furniture to consider and that means we have an additional queen and full size sleep number mattresses that we would like to keep as they are so expensive and so comfortable—we have a queen one for some years ourselves and we bought the full size to be in the Queen Mother's guest room because the extra firm mattress would have us in terrible pain by the third night. We have thought and talked about several scenarios, because we really do not want to sell our guest room furniture but we don't want to try to store it either.
The guest room is definitely not to the Princess' taste but she did say that it all looks nicely put together, so maybe she can stand it for "just two years," as she puts it, because she has some grand idea that she will not be here soon after she turns 18, but Mama is thinking a bit differently since I am hoping we move. (I am thinking that she is coming back to "being a girl," like when she used to dress for dinner, even though she would not admit it to us yet.) So, we decided that she will get the full size mattress to the replace the double sized pillow top queen mattress presently in there—I mention that it is a double sided pillow top because it is rather high. The full mattress will only give her a few more inches of walk-around-the-bed space, but she is only going to be using it for her bedroom because...
The bedroom she now has is going to be her...um, well I have come to call it her "hide out," because "study" sounds too stuffy for her. I did toy with "phrontistery"—actually I am still toying with that one. We will repaint it. I am thinking it might be messy although I have to say she is rather neat, but when she is doing a project at her desk....she becomes something else. It will have the digital piano that is currently taking up space in my dining room and her desk that is downstairs. She will rearrange her bookshelves so she has a place for all the homeschool books we will are actively using, which are also taking up space in my dining room and downstairs. This room she can use to hang out with her friends also.
It is not ideal, but given the floor plan we have, it is better than it has been. Her bedroom can still be used for guests, but since we have not had any for about ten years...well, what is the point of leaving an empty room for nobody coming?
Since we all compromised on those two rooms, the rest is a matter of moving many things from one place to the other between here and Florida and from one space to another within our home.
My husband decided the open trailer he bought a few years ago mostly to haul his ATV is not what we really need now. He had been toying with the idea to build a large shed, but his time and energy have been a commodities in shorter supply between work and the extra things with the Queen Mother, trips to Florida, and her stuff. He then came up with another small move towards the next big one: to get an enclosed trailer that we could use like a shed for storage of many items in our garage, after we move furniture items between Florida and here, of course. It is not ideal for me because I just see it as a space hog in our driveway, but we are seriously planning to move within the next one to three years, so having something we can use to move our furniture is a plus and, if we will not be needing it later, trailers resell well here—we sold ours for a good price in just two days. In fact, the one we just sold went for more than 2x what we paid for it in two days, although we did fix it up with wood sides. Because we have to move furniture in about two weeks, he ordered one instead of looking for a used one. We just do not have the time and it will cost about the same as a shed...not if he built the shed himself but....time.
It always comes down to time and money. If one is short in time, he usually has to spend more money. One who has time and is short on money, usually spends more time. Time is a what we are shortest on these days. It just is what it is right now.
If you found yourself wondering what we are going to do with the extra queen-size sleep number bed, may I introduce my husband's bigger of the small moves and another one of his justifications for buying the big pickup truck, which was not a very small move, in my opinion. He wants to get a camper and it makes some sense with how our lifestyle will be. The Queen Mother will have to remain in Florida for at least five years due to financial reasons, so we will need to continually go down to Florida to check in on her at least once or twice every two months, we are thinking. Yes, my husband has some sky miles and hotel points, but few hotels take big dogs and those things do get used up and there are plenty of camping areas in Florida. Plus, the man seriously wants to hunt and having a camper gives him a better opportunity and more choices. Then there is me...I used to love to travel and camp in tents, but I am the one in this family who has traveled the least in the last twenty years and I am not so fond of tents in rainy weather nor sleeping uncomfortably when I camp, so sleeping on a sleep number bed in our own camper that we can pull along, maybe even have electricity when we like, is far more appealing to me than when I was younger and called such people "city campers." Anyway, we will store the mattress until we get the camper, which will be another exercise in compromise, I would think.
Lots of things are changing and at times, like today, it all just overwhelms me. At times I feel like I am trying to walk on shifting sands, but just when I feel like maybe I cannot do all this, I remember hearing God say He is going to bless me and I realize that it will work for the good.
My Lord, help us to make good decisions with our time and money, particularly now that we are all so stressed out.
