I apologize in advance for this long rant. Please feel free to skip reading this if not interested. I figured though that this thread might be a reasonable place to post this.
My formerly neat pristine house is now full and cluttered. Sigh. This all changed this week. DS and his husband moved in with us.
Their apartment lease was up as of 3/4/2025 (three days ago). My goal is to have their clutter out of our living areas and moved to our basement, our attic, their storage locker (it's a 10 x 10 -- They have their furniture they won't be moving into our house there now and are just starting to move some boxes over after going thru them). To have more room for their stuff I am also getting a storage shed for our back yard. I just bought one of these yesterday. It's an 8 by 10 "Blow Molded Resin Storage Shed" with the double doors and six little skylights that I will have a contractor put a wood or cement flat surface in our yard for. I got it at Menards, but have it pending for delivery. Today I will go back over to Menards late afternoon after a tennis match to look at contractors on file. I won't need a building permit because the size is below the limit on that, but I will need a zoning permit that I am told usually only takes a day or two to approve in our city.
In terms of clutter and boxes, our bedroom and bath are fine - off limits. Our loft off the master bedroom is fine. Their porch furniture is there now, and actually looks fantastic there. Our family room which the kitchen opens up too is a sanctuary for me and DH is fine, except for five of their boxes. We got rid of a huge dog crate that our large dog over 90 pounds doesn't use any more to have a place for them to put those boxes temporarily that were too heavy for DS by himself to carry to our attic or basement . There are now just five boxes instead of eight. They have gone thru three of them. We are eating in our family room now too as our dining room table and dining room and part of the living room is full of their stuff (it's a small combined LV / DR area). The look is warehouse / clutter. We are not allowing anything to clutter up the kitchen - finding space for stuff of theirs right away or having them put stuff aside for storage. My office area (part of our combined living room / dining room is off limits for the most part) and is a sanctuary for me. But right now 2/3rd of my biggest desk which was a work from home desk till I retired is covered with their stuff (is a staging area for Goodwill donations - stuff they are deciding to donate). I've done one Goodwill run for them and have some things to itemize and do a second.
They have been super busy between work, getting the areas they will be living in set up, and sorting thru boxes and getting things moved. (Their living areas are really looking good and coming together with each still having a few boxes to sort thru - guest bedroom that is their bedroom now, second guest bedroom that is an office area for them now - both on main floor and a 600 square foot area in our basement that is finished that they will have as a private hang out area.).
They are delightful people who are a joy to me and I am happy to provide them with a landing place while they figure out what they want to do next. They are thinking of an out of state move and this allows them to save up some money for that.
I'm thankful on timing too. I retired seven months ago and am glad not to be having this going on and working from home full time. I am telling myself to give them a little time too, to go thru all their boxes. I'm very motivated, though, to reclaim our living areas (family room free of boxes and LR/DR free of boxes and their clutter). What do you think is a reasonable timeframe for this? DH and I in previous moves had everything perfect in 48 hours, but we are minimalists and DS is a collector. I will say though, that their apartment always looked darling, not cluttered. And when we moved in the past we moved to empty places that were all our own, not in with someone else. We also had a full week off of work for the out of state moves and had company paid movers.
My niece and her husband from Idaho are coming to visit over part of their spring break (both are teachers) - March 24-29. The visit was planned before I knew DS and his husband would be moving in and originally plans were that they would be staying with us. But we don't have that big a house, and there is just no room in the house really even with camping type accommodations, so I have booked a nearby hotel for my niece and her husband for their stay. I hope it's way before that, but I sort of in my mind have a deadline of having our living areas free of clutter and boxes by at least March 23rd. The areas for DH and his husband I consider theirs, they can have those however they want.
For my own sanity, a plan B is once I have my storage shed built is to give them a deadline and anything not moved by then from the family room and LR/DR gets moved there. They can then continue their review etc. there, but I will having living spaces I want back looking good again.
14 random items donated
10 pieces of clothing donated
6 items tossed in the garbage
5 Candles & 10 packages of wax melts used up
3 bath products used/emptied
). OTC meds are now marked with the use-by date on the tops in sharpie so I can restock (if we need them) or toss with more regularity. I ended up purging a number of blow dryers, curling and flat irons (I kept one curling iron and ended up getting a wall mounted blow dryers like hotel have-takes up less space). dh had way too many electric razors and such that duplicated each other-had him choose which to toss.
