The Stress Begins

After successfully moving, the hubby went to work Monday leaving me with an apartment full of boxes. I, being the rebellious person I am, have just simply skirted around them almost pretending they don't exist instead of actually unpacking them. Then when one of them gets in my way I simply take everything out of it and set the stuff randomly around the house in order to make our hallway walkable. It would probably be easier to just unpack the boxes and put the stuff away but where's the fun in that?

Anyway, I'm rambling. Today we started shopping for houses again. Have I said, I hate buying a house. I. hate. it. So the next 30 years few months of our lives will be stressful. We looked at 5 houses today. Add that to the 5 we looked at when we were looking before we moved which makes a grand total of 10 houses. (I realized 10 isn't a lot) I'm not sure how many more I can look at!

It's impossible to compare the houses because they are so different. One's nicely priced but too far from work, the other is overpriced but has a jungle they call the front yard, another is great on the inside but sitting on the side of a hill with our back door looking at a huge rock wall 3 feet from the door. It's impossible. The house we LOVE is a little bit too expensive for us but do-able. It also has 8 people living in it right now, which means it has more than the usual wear and tear.

So we think perhaps we'll put an offer on the house we love. That is the moment house shopping is no longer a game of dreaming about us living in this or that house/neighborhood. That's when it becomes scary and non-fun. The financing is frightening to even semi-educated people like us. The risk of buying an overpriced house is real. The thought of having an astronomical mortgage payment become a reality.

The American Dream of owning land and calling your house yours is no longer appealing to me. I think I will go stake out a nice spot for our cardboard box house in order to get that feeling of ownership.

I now understand why people have such pride in the ownership of their house. It's because it about killed them to buy the house.