I have mixed feelings about New Year's Resolutions, for the usual and obvious reasons. It annoys me to make them and then either do them all before June, thus having set the bar too low and then not having goals for the rest of the year, or to achieve so few of them that I feel like I wasted the year. And sometimes, January is just the wrong time for me to be thinking about goals, since the gloomy lack of sun and unpleasantly frigid air is just depressing. Fortunately, it hasn't been that way this year. With remarkably good timing on the close of the Cookstove House, the beginning of this year seems perfect for making some resolutions/setting some goals. And I have decided to put them into the blog with my progress on completing them, because a) you can harass me about getting stuff done if you know what I'm supposed to be doing; and b) I thought this would be a good place to keep a record of the before/after changes to Cookstove House and the land it is on.
So far, we've gotten two trailers full of stuff from our storage unit down to the house (that was Saturday). There is one more load left in the unit, or several van loads, if I happen to be driving past and have time to take care of it. The goal is to get it done before the end of the month, because we don't want the monthly storage unit rental expense anymore. This is somewhat challenging because Cookstove House has no attic, no garage, and what is colloquially referred to as a "Michigan basement" which means that the basement is dirt floor under the original 100 year old house and all the additions since then have been over crawlspace. Very, very tight crawlspace. Basically, only enough room for the furnace and the water heater and the stairs up/down. So I have to find space to put everything where it isn't in the way, or I need to get rid of it, unless I'm willing to store it in the barn.
The other task that was completed was cleaning the fridge/freezer. That was this afternoon before the weather got so bad we thought we should head back to the apt before the roads really got nasty. The fridge was rather yucky. It's a big fridge, which is good, but I dislike the freezer on top. Someday, I'll have another one with the freezer on the bottom. In the meantime, this one is clean and now I need to figure out the least annoying configuration for the shelves.
El Jefe also measured all the windows for me, so I can come up with some window treatments for the windows that currently have none.
For tomorrow, assuming reasonable driving conditions, I'm going to pack another van load of stuff from the apartment, haul it down, unload it and start sorting everything so far delivered into the correct rooms. The wood paneling needs painting, and I wish I could do it before we moved in, but I don't want to paint indoors without opening all the windows and doors for venitalation, and that won't be possible until spring, since if I did it now, it wouldn't be warm enough to paint. At least, that's my excuse. I may see how bad the fumes are painting the kitchen, while we can still come back to the apt to sleep and not breathe the fumes at night.
Time for a momentary break to watch an ep of Man, Woman, Wild with El Jefe and the girls...
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