It’s been 6 months since my fiancée
and I moved into the house we bought together.
Just in case anyone doesn’t know, prior to that I lived in an apartment
with roommates for 7 years and before that I lived with my dad. So, needless to say (but I’m gonna say it
anyways because it ups my word count and I go into every article like it’s a
school essay), my life has changed a bit.
And I could just leave it there, but boy that would make this a really
shit article and despite the fact that I’m rather rusty, I am not that terrible
at writing (I think). So, let’s get into
some specifics about how my life is different these days.
1. I Don’t Do Dishes/Laundry Anymore
Don’t get me wrong, I still wash
dishes and throw clothes in the washer and dryer. I don’t want anyone to think that I’m some
lazy asshole who pawns all of this work off on my fiancée. But I no longer “do” the dishes or laundry
because to do them would imply that at some point they will be done; that I
will have achieved a state of done-ness.
This is not the case. With 2
grown adults and 2 kids all contributing to the excess of dirty clothes and
dishes, this is a never-ending task. Dishes and laundry are never
completed. They are never done. They are
a universal constant. They are eternal.
They simply are. I never do the
dishes and laundry anymore, I merely co-exist with them.
Pictured: My Life
2. I’m a Sneaky Snacker
When I was on my own, I ate pretty
much whatever I wanted at any time of day or night. Not so much anymore because me opening the
refrigerator is like a dog whistle to 2 little gremlins/children/walking
garbage disposals in the house. Just as
I’m about to take a bite of the last donut, here they come both asking for
it. Open up some chips, and next thing
I know one of the kids has absconded with the bag. The other night I was counting the minutes
until bedtime because I wanted to eat a cookie without being harassed. The positive to this whole thing is that
sometimes I forget that I even wanted a snack, which I believe has improved my
eating habits overall. This may actually
be how I stick to a healthy diet.
This doesn’t seem like the worst idea…
3. I Don’t Have to Fight for the Bathroom
Living in an apartment with 1
bathroom for 3 people had exactly the kind of troubles that you’d expect. There were actually times when either myself
or one of my roommates would walk down the street to the gas station because we
just couldn’t wait any longer for whoever was tying up the bathroom. Now I’ve
got 3 bathrooms shared between 4 people.
It’s amazing! I can poo in peace
and on my own schedule. I’m essentially
living in the lap of luxury. The one
caveat to this is that I typically don’t get to pick which bathroom I get to
use because my fiancée doesn’t appreciate the fragrance that emanates from the
bathroom when I’m in there and the effect that it has on adjacent rooms in the
house. So the downstairs bathroom is
essentially my own personal Dookin’ Dungeon.
Getting this bad boy installed next week.
4. I Have No Idea How Much Toilet Paper Is
Left
This is a problem that arises from
the fact that I now have more than 1 bathroom. See, when you only have 1
bathroom, you can keep all the toilet paper in that one bathroom and every time
you change the roll, you know how much is left.
Now that I have 3 bathrooms, the toilet paper is kept in a centralized
location (the hall closet) and rationed out to each bathroom as needed. At any given time, I may know how much TP is
left in one bathroom, but there may or may not be any backup supply in the hall
closet to portion back out if needed.
Now, I’m not really one for living dangerously, so I cannot shake the
feeling that I’m headed for disaster with this, but I will say that my fiancée
is pretty on top of this whole situation and I think that is a great quality in
someone I’m going to spend the rest of my life with.
5. There Are Blankets FUCKING EVERYWHERE
This may come as a bit of a
surprise, but I actually kept a relatively tidy bachelor pad at my
apartment. I’m not a neat freak by any
stretch of the imagination, I just have a few habits like putting my wallet,
keys and phone in the same place all the time so I don’t lose them, not leaving
out food because I don’t want bugs, and trying to keep some semblance of
organization in my clutter. For
instance, while I may have had a random assortment of papers, coasters, remotes
and gaming controllers on my coffee table, I never left anything on the sofa or
on the floor in the living room. In my
apartment I had a shelf in the laundry room where I kept extra blankets and
pillows. In the house we store our
blankets wherever they fucking fall.
Seriously, it’s like we threw a huge party and instead of confetti we
just had blankets raining from the ceiling.
Or that we built a blanket fort city in our house but then a hurricane
rolled through and destroyed it all and now we’re looking over all the blankets
scattered about and telling each other “We will rebuild.” I don’t even know where all these blankets
came from, but the kids are usually building a fort or spreading one on the
floor for an imaginary picnic, my fiancée is typically wrapped up in one like a
burrito because she is cold forever, and I am usually strolling through the
house with one draped over my shoulders like a cape and pretending I’m a
benevolent king presiding over my people because fucking whatever, sometimes
you just gotta enjoy life instead of worrying about the blankets that are
mysteriously multiplying in your home.
My kingdom in its former glory, before the Hurricane
Fleece swept through the land destroying everything.
I could
probably go on for a while about ways in which my life has changed from being a
single dude in an apartment with no kids to being an engaged man living with
his fiancée and 2 kids in a house that they bought together, but 5 items is a
good place to stop a list. And since
I’ve heavily struggled with writing any new articles for like the last….ever,
I’m going to try to save some ideas to hopefully parlay into even more new
posts. Maybe. I hope.
I do think it’s important to note, though, that as different as things
may be in my life now, I wouldn’t change it for the world.
-Ryan
