Living in close quarters through a pandemic changes how we think about our houses, doesn't it? I always liked the open floor plan of our first floor - made it easy to supervise little kids, seemed light and open. But in the pandemic, we realized we didn't have doors to close on spaces when a number of us needed to be on separate screens, on separate Zooms (oh, Zoom, how we hate and need thee).
My husband and I crunched the numbers and decided to take over the rest of the second floor apartment. When we bought our three-storey house, each floor was an apartment. When Genevieve was a newborn, we renovated the house to add interior stairs and create a first floor apartment for us that included part of the second floor. Over the years, we have gradually nibbled away at the second floor apartment until 2 weeks ago when we swallowed it entirely.
Glory be, we added another bedroom, a family room, and a bathroom! Now our girls have separate rooms, which is a wonderful development in their relationship. Now I have an actual desk in our family room instead of just a drawer next to the dining room table.
It feels incredibly luxe to not have to wait for someone else in the bathroom, to have masses of storage in the new bathroom, to have a second fridge in the apartment kitchen (and sink and stove, but the fridge is what I immediately put into use). We even have a second staircase to access our new space.
It's disorienting, honestly. The first night in the new bedroom, I kept worrying about my babies, spread out all over this huge house. I'm still a little puzzled about how much desk stuff to take up to my desk and how much to leave in the dining room, which I have realized is the nerve center of the house.
We had to acquire some more furniture and organizing things. I did my best to buy second-hand items from local sources. The way I see it, not only is this cost-effective, but better for the planet than manufacturing new (cheaply made) stuff that is shipped from everywhere. But oh my, I am also now experiencing the big-house effect, where I have doubled the bathroom equipment, added more bedroom furniture for Genevieve, and considering how many duplicate desk supplies I need upstairs that are already in use at other desks. We have another air conditioner in a window, too, now, which I recognize as really helpful in our swampy summers, but hate the enlargement of our carbon footprint. Living in small spaces makes us efficient, for sure.
