Closet Trauma

I haven't written in forever -- well, more than four months -- and in that time a bit has changed.  We've been in the house that long, certainly long enough to make it feel lived in, perhaps too lived in.  The reality is even though we have the same amount of square footage that we had in Cambridge, in a certain sense we have nowhere near as much room.  Our house here, which looked so gigantic in all its massive redness extending from one side of our Christmas card to the other, consists of really only four rooms -- well, five if you count the tiny kitchen -- while our little house in Cambridge, squashed in amongst its two neighbors a few feet away on each side, had six rooms, even when the combined living and dining room are counted as one.  The additional rooms didn't add square feet, obviously, but they did give us something else important -- walls.  And walls can have things pushed up against them, and in our world, those were typically things that could store stuff.  In Portland, we have lots of open space -- lovely to walk through - but providing nowhere to put anything, except, of course, right in the middle of the pathway from dining room to kitchen, say, or bedroom to bath.  And we've used that space and many others.

This situation is of course exacerbated by the classic problem of an 1827 house -- no closets!  Literally there are zero closets -- yes, you read that right -- 0, better known as no, none, ZERO -- closets on the first floor of the house, the place you normally store coats and vacuum cleaners and drop leaves to the dining room table and embarrassing art projects that even your kid wouldn't want to have displayed.  On the second floor, things are, a little, better.  There are three whole closets -- two in my room and one in Kanha's -- although not very big ones.  We're not talking about a place you can stand in and contemplate your clothes selection for the morning -- I'm lucky if I can tug the pair of pants I'm planning to wear out without popping off three other hangers.

In fact, I had such closet trauma when we moved in that I took the room with two closets instead of the one with only one but direct access to the bathroom.  My girlfriend pointed out that this might be a problem when I had a "friend" spend the night who might not want to be caught by Kanha in his skivvies in the hallway.  (Dreams of the hallway scene in "Kramer vs. Kramer" with the gender roles reversed.)  That never crossed my mind, being more concerned with hiding my own stuff vs. anyone else's.

All of this should produce a pretty clear picture for you -- we have stuff -- mine, Kanha's, and seemingly eight other children's -- everywhere.  It's not pretty, convenient, nor likely to get resolved soon enough.  Although we're working on it -- renovation has started on my personal suite for the third floor that will give us all kinds of additional space, along with a few more walls and even a walk-in closet!  

More details about that to come, along with the introduction of our new family member, Theo, who has caused a name change in the blog.  I think he's even better than a view, if a lot, lot, lot more work.