what i learned in my first year of home owning

On Saturday (12.15.18), Aaron and I celebrated being home owners for a full year.

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Our home was a result of literally years of prayer, tears, disappointments and dreams. When we signed the papers and were given the code to the lock-box that had our keys in it, it was like being on cloud-nine.

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We moved in within 2 days with full intentions of being semi-settled before Christmas the following weekend.

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To celebrate our 1 year anniversary of living in this house, I thought it would be fun to do a little round-up post with a mix of funny stories involving things that went wrong + some precious memories that this house has held for us this year.

 

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The Days Without a Fridge

To begin, our home did not come with a fridge so for the first few days, we lived off restaurants and non-refrigerated food (which you’d be surprised how many things need to go in the fridge… haha), until we realized that our basement had an old fridge that worked (the “oh my gosh! No duh!” moment was hilarious) and we walked up and down a steep, long flight of stairs to get our food. I joked that walking those stairs so much would put me into premature labor 😛

 

Piles of Laundry

The house also didn’t come with a washer/dryer (and no, there wasn’t one downstairs that we had forgotten about), and at the time, Rylie was wearing cloth diapers. Uh-huh. This was what prompted us to get disposables and ultimately, switch to using disposables full time and ending our cloth diaper journey. We had piles of dirty laundry for a couple weeks before we found a washer/dryer that worked for our home’s layout.

 

I was completely oblivious to how much we use both of these appliances.

 

No Hot Water

Another thing that happened within the first couple months is our water heater was messed up and we had to have a tech come out and fix it so we had hot water. This left us with a couple days of no hot water in late-December / early-January (I washed my hair in freezing cold water but I refused to take a legit shower because I was not going to put me and my unborn child through that kind of torture 😝.

 

They Shut Off Our Gas

Oh, and then there was that time our gas was turned off and we have a gas stove/oven, water heater, etc. It was a Thursday and a tech came out and without any notice or friendly knock on the door switched our gas off. When we realized this had happened that evening, it was after hours and we couldn’t call. The next morning (Friday), Aaron called our providers as soon as they opened and they told us we had not paid our bills. Aaron had been very intentional about calling all of our utility people and the gas provider told us we would receive something in the mail. So we set aside the money and kept checking the mail but nothing came. Aaron reiterated all of this to the person on the phone and they said they would look into it and get back to us. Half a day later, they called Aaron back and said he was correct (I’m sure they have people lie all the time, but still…) and asked for payment for the previous months we had used the gas which he gladly did. They said they would get a tech out to our house to turn our gas back on the next business day (which was a Monday). My baby shower was that weekend and we needed to cook food. Not to mention we had a 15 month old and a 34 week pregnant woman living there. Aaron politely told them that wasn’t going to work and explained that he had a baby and a pregnant wife at home and this was not our fault and the gas needed to be turned back on that day. No joke guys, I pass this providers office every day on the way to work, and I was completely prepared to march my pregnant self down there and tell them to turn it back on hahaha. Luckily, they made arrangements for them to come out that same day to turn it back on. Phew.

 

A Clogged Kitchen Sink

A few months later our kitchen sink clogged. That was great.

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When we moved in, we noticed that if we left the water running for too long the kitchen sink would fill up with water. We thought this was weird, but it drained shortly after so we didn’t consider it a priority. Well after a few months of it progressively getting worse – one day it just stopped draining and was full of nasty, backed up water. Days went by before we could take the time to fix it and we got by on paper plates and as few dishes as we possibly could manage. It didn’t take long for our house to smell and the snake we bought from WalMart was not helping one bit. We ended up having to rent one from Home Depot (the cheapest option). It took Aaron and afternoon but he found the problem – greese. There was a ton of greese in our drains (mostly from the previous owner) and it had built up so much that the water couldn’t get through anymore. I have never been so thankful to have a working kitchen sink again in my life!

 

Bugs, Rodents & Reptiles

Then there is your usual Alabama roaches and big ol’ spiders that make you jump and shiver from the creepiness. For months I was so confused why these bugs were in our home. We were not dirty people, so why were they in our house!? It took me a while to learn that everyone gets bugs in their house – it’s just what happens. We sprayed some bug killer on our baseboards and mixed water with peppermint and sprayed that around our house as well to keep the spiders away. We also have mice in  our walls and we’ve seen a couple in our living room late at night once or twice. We set traps and have caught a few, but kill 1 mouse and 2 more take its place. Perplexed by this as well, Aaron reminded me that our backyard is a forest (literally!) and mice are just going to be attracted to our house. It’s an old home and it happens.

And I have to share the story about the time Aaron found a snake in our bedroom.

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Aaron was moving some things in our bedroom, including a suitcase that we had placed behind the door. He thought the thin but large black circle on the floor was a hair-tie of mine, but when he went to pick it up and it started slithering away, Aaron jumped and realized it was a snake! A little 12-inch black snake had somehow got into our room and was hiding behind our suitcases. Aaron trapped it in a jar and sent me a picture of it along with the story. “No sir! Nope. I can’t!” was my reply. Our unwelcomed visitor sat on our counter while we thought of what to do with it.  A few hours later, Aaron took the jar and chucked the snake as far as he could into the forest. To prevent this from happening in the future, we sprinkled some powder outside our bedroom walls to keep them out.

 

 

There are a few main points you can take away from all these stories:

  1. You become thankful real quick when you realize how frequently you have appliances that you don’t have or things stop working.
  2. When something breaks, you are responsible to fix it
  3. Everyone has bugs & rodents. If they don’t, either their home is brand new or they haven’t told you about it. Just spray and keep a shoe handy 😉

 

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Okay, now that I’ve given you some great life lessons 😝

 

Here are the sweetest memories we currently have in our home:

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  • Easter brunch with the Tribe was at our house – complete with an Easter Egg Hunt

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And that list doesn’t include the laughs, projects, play dates, home-cooked meals, dinners with friends & family, owies, the seemingly insignificant day-to-day moments that make a house a home.

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Aaron and I like to say that our home isn’t for us – it’s for others. So dress comfortably, what’s ours is yours, eat anywhere you want and the bathroom is down the hall, second door on the left.

This home has been good to us, and I know will continue to be a blessing to us and many others for years to come!