Drastic Action Needed

I have the house I always wanted. Three bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, an eat in kitchen, a dining room, a yard...everything.

I should be happy with this. I should love it and want to spend all my time keeping it lovely. But I don't. In fact, I feel like it is a giant burden on my shoulders; something that takes far far far more work to keep at a minimum standard than I ever spend enjoying it.

I have a beautiful dining room set that I always wanted. A buffet, a HUGE table with fancy chairs, and a china cabinet with glas doors on the top. These things are all dusty because I never use them. I wanted to host big dinners with all my family. Truth be told I think that's the most labor intensive and boring way to entertain. I only do it when I have to. My family tries to push it on me all the time because that's the way they like it, but I prefer to have several locations of party stuff like food and things and everyone mill around rather than all sit as one large unit. This is not even taking into account the enormous amount of time it takes to clean off, set, serve, and then clean up said table.

I have a huge living room. After my last, old living room which was very small, I thought I'd love this huge, airy living room. I don't. It's impossible to make cozy and comfortable. There is either way too much furniture or not enough. The floor is always covered with birdseeds from my parakeets and even though I love the laminate floors, I don't like stepping on birdseed all the time.

We have two complete media setups. See, my priority is "ease of use" and E's priority is "mega quality". While this is great for parties, it also means an enormous amount of dedicated space for both setups, not to mention money. And with two setups to choose from, each designed specifically for its primary user, we can't watch movies together because he doesn't think my setup is properly optimized and his couch makes me fall asleep.

I finally have a decent sized kitchen. I have a pantry of which my mother is insanely jealous. I have counterspace. Of course, what I've done is fill said counter space, because it's easy to grab stuff off the counter, and the pantry is mostly empty because it's inconvenient to get into with the table in the way.

I have 2.5 bathrooms. I initially thought this was awesome. E's friends wouldn't poop in my bathroom and we wouldn't have to "alert" each other if we were going to be awhile in case the other person had to pee. We can both bathe at the same time--it's nice. But it's also three toilets to clean, a shower and a bathtub, and all that mess.

And then there's the yard. It's a nice size for a yard, but the large trees and odd sun/shade pattern means it would be a prohibitively intensive job to try to get the lush green barefoot lawn I'd like. Our yard is full of sticks and dirt patches and weeds. Maggie far prefers to go to the park rather than play in the yard.

We have an attached garage, too, which is great except that it is too narrow to park the car in it and also get out of said car. I use it for storing things I don't know what else to do with. Mice live in there in the winter. It smells, too.

On top of all this, we have finally figured out the problem with our budget. The expenses equal more than the income. It's the classic problem, isn't it? So now we are stuck looking at what to get rid of. And unfortunately, we can't reduce the mortgage or the taxes or the car insurance or the utilities. What we're stuck with is choosing among the enjoyable things in life; the things we decided were worth the money because we get a lot of enjoyment out of them. Things like Netflix, Blythe dolls, fancy silk ties, Blu Ray players, the YMCA membership, the Blackberry, the internet service, going out to eat.

So what do I do? I don't know. I suggested cancelling the internet service but E isn't willing to give that up. He suggested cancelling the Blackberry but I am not really willing to give that up. I wish there was a way to reduce the things that AREN'T fun, like medical expenses, car insurance, and electricity.