Moving In

Once again, believe it or not, I'm rushing to get the house ready for a big event.

I'm so excited--one of my daughters and her family are moving to a new home just fifteen minutes away from us. Fifteen! Their current home is only forty minutes away, but it's an unpleasant drive and parking is difficult.

Fifteen minutes means dropping in for an hour or so whenever, instead of planning and taking half a day. Which does not in any way mean that I might not spend a half day or more with their little one. The whole prospect fills me with big warm fuzzies.

There's going to be a period of two to three weeks that they'll be staying with us. They need to have some work done at the new place, and with a little one who gets into everything (EVERYTHING!), it only makes sense to get it done before they move in.

I tackled the guest room yesterday. This hasn't been an issue before because other visitors generally stay for a long weekend and living out of their suitcases isn't a problem. This time, I think they should be able to unpack. While there were a few things I could get rid of, much of it is stuff we need on occasion. A friend suggested the old "put it in a Rubbermaid tub in the basement until they leave" system. I said that that was how I lost track of things and didn't do it anymore.

After puttering for an hour, I asked my husband to bring an empty tub up from the basement.

Making the house safe for the littlest guy is the bigger challenge. He's been coming here once a week for several months and as he discovers things he shouldn't, we've  managed to block them, hide them, or put locks on them. But no matter how much we toddler-proof the place, he continually finds something else to get into. We do say "no," but the idea is for him to be safe, even if one of us isn't watching him every minute.

The real problem is that his imagination is more advanced than ours.

Sometimes I wonder if my house will ever be organized enough so that having company of any kind won't involve hiding the excess. I'm not worried about things being sparkling clean 24/7 and I don't mind a certain amount of clutter. I mean people live here--no one should expect a showroom.  But I do wonder .

And then I think ... probably not.