Starting the "To Do" List

We moved into our current house when Oliver was 16 days old and crammed furniture and belongings into the third bedroom and called it an office, and then put the extra bed and all the dressers, nightstands and off-season clothes that wouldn't fit into our impossibly small "master" bedroom into the fourth bedroom and called that a guest room, even though only one person has slept there for a total of two nights in the 20 months we've lived here. The goal was simply to unpack - we'd worry about organization later. Later finally came when we learned we'd be having a second kid and the necessity to create room for him or her loomed. I had naively thought the work we'd done over two years ago in preparation for the sale of a home, a move and a new baby - numerous trips to Goodwill, cleaning out closets and the kitchen junk drawer, selling furniture, buying the baby and nursery necessities - meant that the preparation for Baby 2.0 would be pretty simple.

Yet we still ended up with a "to do" list that looks like this:

- Clear out office and closet.
- Clear out guest bedroom.
- Figure out where to relocate towels, toiletries and cleaning supplies that had occupied the office closet because our two-bathroom home was built without a single linen closet (or coat closet).
- Buy new set of nursery furniture and set up in former office.
- Evict Oliver from his crib, transition him to a bed and set up old crib in new nursery.
- Repurpose tiny guest bedroom to also function as an office.
- Research and buy double stroller.
- Relocate and organize baby gear I had boxed up and stashed in the basement after Oliver no longer needed it.
- Reroof garage.
- Finish basement.
- Purge junk.

At least we're not trying to pack up the contents of our lives while I'm nine months pregnant this time around, but we sure haven't made it much easier on ourselves. We're not only trying to dedicate space to a whole new family member where there seems no room to spare, but with better understanding of the reality that a new baby means you get nothing else done, we have the feeling like it's now or never for renovation projects, like finishing an entire basement.

Memorial Day weekend the past couple of years has been spent at Chris's parent's cabin, but we took advantage of a three-day weekend and availability from friends and family to start on our to-do list. We can now check off the one item from our list that has the least bearing on the new baby, the garage roof. But we're relieved not to have to worry whether the old one would have survived another severe summer storm.

I was tempted for a split second to get up on the roof with Chris and help rip off shingles, but instead I worked on the less cathartic, but safer task, of clearing out the office and guest bedroom. Despite the fact that every move offers the "opportunity" to purge yourself of unnecessary stuff, I was still astounded by what I discovered had not be used, let alone touched, in years, yet had made the move from my apartment in Minneapolis (where I lived before I met Chris) to our shared duplex in St. Paul, to our first house in Stillwater, then on to St. Paul, and then only last weekend was thrown in a box bound for Goodwill - or a garbage bag.

Neither room is near finished being cleared out, but eventually I got overwhelmed with the task of where to put everything and called it quits for the weekend. Oliver's due date had been the kick in the pants we had needed to accomplish what needed to be done before he arrived, and I'm expecting (and relying) on Baby 2.0's due date to have a similar effect on our organizational motivation. What's the saying? "If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done."