92. Owning Property!

Living on my own

A few thoughts after living in my own place for a few weeks now.

• I have to turn off the light. I would sometimes go to bed before my parents, and I would leave the light on in the hallway because I knew they would be coming up to bed sooner or later. The other day, I was lying in bed and noticed that the light in the hallway was still on. For a brief moment I thought somebody else was going to turn it off, but then I remembered that I was the only one in the place. I had to get up.
• The decisions are mine! I’m not a great decision maker. Once a decision is made, I’m usually all on board, but when the final decision is up to me, I get anxious. Right now it’s all about choosing a paint color. Ugh. I only know that I sort of want a grey-ish scheme. That’s super broad, I know. I don’t know what to think about that. Am I doing this right? Am I not? Will this color look ok? Ugh. I sort of want to hire an interior decorator, but I don’t want to spend the money.
• Work on one project at a time, especially if your family is involved. My family, God bless ‘em, came over to help me with projects on Saturday. While I appreciated the work, I kind of was left with a bigger mess than I began with. I thought I be starting on the bedroom, turns out, we started on the kitchen cabinets. I’m not a huge fan of what I have now, but I thought it would be a bigger investment later. The though process went through a bunch of things: replacing cabinets, repainting them, redoing the inside. It gave me a headache. I think I’m just going to do a small change first and just paint the shelves inside. That’s an easy project to do at the moment. Do one thing at a time. I have time.
• This gives me a whole new subject matter for conversations with my friends. Renting for the good portion of the last decade of my life has prevented me from really thinking about renovations and maintenance work. I wasn’t in charge of decorating! Or a maintainence guy with fix it! Now I talk painting, redoing bathrooms, shelving, lamps, mortgages and EQUITY. Man, adult conversations are so enlightening.
• Everybody wants to give you stuff. I sincerely believe we as a society have a problem with too much crap. I’ve had a least a dozen people remark that they want to give me stuff that they don’t use anymore. While I appreciate the thoughtfulness, I just wonder how so many people got stuck with things they don’t want for so long. Well, I don’t mind saving money. And time. I hate shopping.

I’ve been a little anxious to get things done quickly. I don’t think I need to be. As much as a roommate would be nice financially, I’m not in dire straits where I’d need one. So I’ll just keep going and get things done as I can.