Under Control

I have got to get my home under control. I figured this out while I was tearing the living room apart looking for a Wii controller that had working batteries.

Ugh. We have junk everywhere. I have brand new dishes in the bedroom. I have boxes of clothes to be put in the yard sale (as soon as it gets warm enough to have one) sitting in the living room. I have half of our camping stuff in my pantry and the other half in my gardening shed. The bathroom Mulligan has come to a complete stop for the time being. The door is back up, btw.

Hubbs has decided that we don't have a "stuff" issue, we have a space issue. He wants to buy a house and use the trailer as a rental.

What? You want to move out of the trailer that we own free and clear and buy a house? Get a mortgage?

I told him that he was going bat-shit crazy. Especially since he hasn't worked in 16 MONTHS!

His response was, "Don't you want new furniture?" Duh? No new furniture. Especially if it comes with a mortgage. Dummy.

I would LOVE to have a house. And we could totally get a house for cheap cheap cheap right now. But I don't want to have a mortgage. Ever. Did I mention he has been furloughed for 16 months?

It is very realistic to pay cash for a house here. A decent 3-4 bedroom 2 bath house runs around $50-75k. If we ever get out of credit card debt, the car paid off and his ass back to work, we could easily save up $75k in about 2 years. My goal is to save up enough cash to have BIL come from Colorado and build us our house. He owns his own construction company and builds AMAZING houses for the rich people in ski towns.

So my answer to the stuff/space issue is to tackle 1 room every weekend. That would include:
1) Pulling every single thing out of the room
2) Deep cleaning-walls, floors, vents, lights, closets
3) Addressing any issues (like socket covers, burned out bulbs, holes, paint) immediately
4) Organizing junk into 4 piles: keep, throw out, yard sale and donate
5) Find everything in the keep pile a home in the room
6) Take the throw out pile to the dump, box up the yard sale pile and take the donate pile to the local donation places

And then move on to the next room. It doesn't sound like much fun but I think if I stick to it, I can get it all done in 2 months. And then all I have to do is maintain it.

That makes a lot more sense than buying a whole new house. It would be psuedo-moving. If I make Hubbs help he might realize just how much work moving really is.