Smaller Footprint

We moved into the rental house this weekend. A solid brick bungalow that appears to have never been touched by a modern rehabber's hammer (outside of the landlord's addition of a bathroom and "bedroom" in the basement. )  We have 1,140 SQ feet of living space sandwiched between a large but stinky basement and an attic.

So lots of storage space coupled with a smaller amount of living space.  Our REAL house had 1,800 SQ feet of livable space before the flood.  But no basement and a hard to access attic.  So why do we have more stuff than could possibly fit into the rental?

Ambitious, logical Anne says we just need to methodically go through the rooms, garage, and attic in our REAL house and mercilessly edit our collection of stuff.  Ridding ourselves of the baggage of things we don't use.  Green Anne says we need to take anything we don't need and either offer it up on Craig's List or drop it off at Salvation Army.  (I'm sure there's a frat house somewhere that wants our flood touched couch.)

Real Anne knows what will happen will be different from what should happen.  Boxes of stuff will be wedged into the attic and basement at the rental and a storage locker.  Because we don't have the time and energy to go through all this crap it will follow us to the remodled REAL house.  Much of it will sit there for years -for the kids to deal with someday.

Real Anne also knows that bags and bags of things will make its way to a landfill someplace.  Because, when faced with a crabby, hungry seven year old at 8:00 PM on a Sunday night, we'll end up tossing plies of stuff into garbage bags (and proably stop for pizza on the way back to the rental.)

So, even with all our green ambtions, moving is not doing anything for our desire to reduce our footprint.  Let's hope we do better with the remodel,