Simplicity in Action!

We brought simplicity to our home on New Years Day by moving our bedrooms from the very cold second floor to the warm basement. It was a big move, even though we didn't move everything. This is just for the next couple of months while the temps are likely to be quite cold. This way we won't be using the baseboard heat at all, and can just benefit from the gas stove that is in the basement, and would be on anyway, as it is the main source of heat for our house. This is our bedroom now - no wall decorations, just the bed with a quilt my grandma made us for our wedding and a bouquet of dried lavendar to cheer the place up a bit. We brought down the dresser and Andy made a make shift closet for us since none of the rooms in the basement have closets. J also moved down, into a smaller room. Again, his bed and dresser came down, and we made a closet situation for him with some old shelving we had. To prepare for all of this took a lot of work. Had to combine the storage room (where J now sleeps) into the laundry room. That required emptying and moving big steel framed shelving units, sorting through junk to be thrown out or stored in the barn, and lots and lots of cleaning and organizing. Just what I needed as I'm trying to get ready to turn my attention to the Bar Exam. But, it is mostly done now. Upstairs looks pretty abandon - bed frames without matresses, dust bunnies revealed, and lots of little piles of unnecessary clutter. After the Bar Exam I'm hoping to take advantage of this move by re-doing the upstairs bathroom. I've had paint for it for years, but never gotten it done. Now that we'll be using the basement bath for while, it will be able to dry out and I'll be able to strip the cupboards and paint the whole thing. But, NOT UNTIL AFTER THE BAR EXAM! And the big reward of all this moving~ we are all much warmer at night for less money! If we don't use the heaters upstairs (and they are electric, so they cost a mint to run) the bedrooms get down to 40 degrees when it gets down to single digits outside. While we love the walls of windows on the south side of our rooms for the wonderful views, they do have the disadvantage of letting out heat and bringing in cold! Down in the basement it was 60 degrees in the rooms (perfect for sleeping) and we didn't run any heat that wouldn't be running anyway. I can't wait to see the savings on the heat bill! J and I took off on a little snow shoe expidition yesterday. It didn't last long, as a storm moved in, and we turned around and headed back to the truck to avoid the freezing rain.

But, the short little mile and a half we did do was a lot of fun.

These photos count as photos for a daily photo challenge I've given myself. I want to take photos every day this year. The bed shot above is from the first. The snow shoeing shots are from the 2nd, and I'm going to go for a walk in a little while with Andy to catch some shots for today. I'll try to post a picture a day (probably always posting behind a day, so that the photo from the third will be posted on the fourth). It is sort of my post on the 365 photo challenge that lots of people are doing. I'm not organized enough to formally join any of those groups this year, but I'll be doing my best here. Maybe next year I can get it together to do one of the groups.