Thursday, June 9, 2011

Make it work! - House edition

There will probably be a lot of posts with this title over the course of the blog. I think that it has become the new motto for my life. I don't think that there's a day that goes by where I don't have to "make it work!" I've gotten so used to it that it's kind of fun now, although there are still times where it can be stressful.

Chrissie and I got a lot of practice at this when we were searching for our house. Our house is a bit different from the place we had in mind when we first started "the process." Originally, we wanted lots of space, an open floor plan, big kitchen, big yard, lots of character, good construction, close to the city, quiet neighborhood. When we went to go look for houses matching this criteria, we discovered that the house we wanted did not exist. Well, I should say it didn't exist in our price range.

This forced us to condense the list a bit and it took us a while to figure out which things we really needed and which things we could do without. During our search we saw just about every possible combination of our original list of features. When we finally found our house, our decision to buy it could be summed up by the phrase, "We love that it comes x, y, and z already and are totally willing to work on the rest over time."

Making it work! is a blessing in disguise in several ways. First, all the effort we spend working on the house puts our own personal stamp on it. The payoff is that the place feels a little more homey every day. Also, it has helped me accept "pretty darn good" as a suitable substitute for "perfect," because, "pretty darn good" is, well, pretty darn good. Last, it forces me to look at life through the lense of what I have instead of what I don't, which is ultimately much more managable.

Hopefully, one day the list of "made it happen!" will be longer than the list of "make it work!" That won't be for a while though. We're really good about getting things done, but there's always a new project catching our eye. Which I think is fun.

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