On the Homefront: So What Have I Been Doing All of this Time?

 

 

Our dining room before the big move...

 

 

...and our dining room after the big move!

Happy first day of fall, everyone!  I have been very remiss when it comes to new posts, but there was a good reason for that.  Ever since my husband got here to our Santa Fe house at the end of 2021, most of the rooms in the house as well as our RV garage have been full of moving boxes (yes, our house came with a huge RV garage/car garage combination but we do not have nor will we ever get an RV!).  I was able to unpack the bedroom and bathroom boxes pretty quickly, and my husband was in charge of dealing with all of the boxes in his study, but the very large room that was supposed to be our dining room was packed with boxes full of living room, dining room, and kitchen items.  I have been slowly working to unpack these boxes, but as there were dozens of boxes, mostly large and/or heavy ones, it was difficult to make much progress.

This past March, I had two dear friends come to visit, and thanks to their help I was finally motivated to get serious about unpacking all of the boxes.  They helped me finish setting up a large china hutch for storing my overly large collection of dinnerware, and we managed to get about half a dozen boxes unpacked before they left.  For the next two months I worked diligently pretty much every day to empty out boxes, find a place for the contents, and dispose of packing materials.

Like most big projects, things always seem to get worse before they get better - items were scattered everywhere as I tried to sort things out and decide where to put them, to the point where I was running out of room to stack stuff!  Finally, however, everything started to fall into place - I got rid of some items, managed to put dishware sets together and figure out where to store them, and started cleaning up the accumulated dust and debris that filled the room. By the end of May the room looked like this:

A usable and almost finished dining room - this is a huge space so we will use it as a library as well as the dining room.

We finally have a dining room!  What you can't see in the far lower right corner is the small stack of several boxes that are open but still not completely unpacked, but these are mostly food items that will eventually get used or stored in our small pantry when space becomes available.  There are also some things that I would like to get rid of but as yet have been unable to find some missing parts.  Remember that RV garage I mentioned earlier?  It is still full of boxes and I am hoping the missing parts are in there somewhere.  I plan to tackle that project some time this fall or winter when the weather cools off, as it has been far too hot to work in the garage over the summer.  I wonder if I can get my friends back for another visit then? 😜  Probably not, as they are very good friends and I would prefer not to lose them! 😊  Anyway, it is a relief to finally be able to use the dining room.

In addition to this major unpacking effort, my husband caught a respiratory virus in May which then led to pneumonia.  He spent three days in the hospital on oxygen and IV antibiotics and even now is still on oxygen at night, although he has been able to wean himself off of daytime oxygen.  He also recently found out that he has severe sleep apnea, which means he may be on nighttime oxygen permanently.  He has an overnight sleep test at the hospital this week to determine exactly how severe the problem is and how it should be treated.  Until recently I have had to deal with all of the maintenance and repair projects we have going on right now since my husband was not up to it, and we have had a lot going on this summer.  However, when I do finally get to start on the garage I will try to post before and after pictures of that project as well.  The situation in the RV garage is even worse than the dining room (just wait until you see the before photos).  Wish me luck!  Hopefully once my husband's situation is resolved I can start posting more regularly, especially now that my favorite season has arrived! 🍁🍄🍂