Since we closed on the house, in the middle of February, I have never been so busy, so consistently busy, every day. And every day something is scheduled for another day, in the future, and the length of my busy-ness extends out in front of me. Right now we have things being done at the house on April 3rd, 8th, and 30th, and two more things loosely scheduled for “next week.” I feel like a machine made for coordinating dates.
My method is to write myself an email about all the things, which I keep in my inbox. And then I write myself an email for each individual thing, and I snooze it until the Monday of the week when it’s actually happening—sometimes for the day that it’s happening. I generally keep up with things with this technique, but it contributes to a feeling of being overwhelmed and over-scheduled.
The problem is that we moved into a house that we legitimately do not fit into. It’s a 2-bedroom. There are 1.5 bathrooms. But there are three of us, and a dog, and my husband works from home, and he plays guitar (which means guitars!), and my work as a writer requires a writing space somewhere. We have pared down so much, but not enough to fit into, as they call it here, a 2-up 2-down (for the two bedrooms upstairs and the living room and kitchen downstairs).
Storage is the main problem. In Britain, you don’t need to have a closet in a room to call it a bedroom. They expect you to buy wardrobes and put them in your rooms. There are many businesses built around “fitted wardrobes,” which are made-to-measure. And generally there is not much love for closets in homes anywhere in the house. A linen closet filled with shelves is not the norm near the upstairs bathroom or bedrooms.
My childhood home had so many closets in our downstairs hallway that guests were always trying multiple doors before finding the bathroom. It was something we laughed about. Now I miss it. Now it sounds like a dream to have so many closets. A fantasy. An exemplar of American excess.