bitterepiphany's Profile

My house is a kid-free zone, both my own and other peoples, most of the year. That means I have a dozen picture frames on the mantle, lots and lots of expensive electronics, and more than a few vases laying around. My furniture all has sharp corners and none of my bookcases are bolted to the wall.

That said, around the holidays, I host a lot of the family gatherings here because - as a kid free zone - i tend to have the most space for mindless entertaining.

At Christmas, my four year old cousin jumped on the back of my sofa, reached over to the bookcase and proceeded to climb it in pursuit of the music box I have on the top of it (which he then proceeded to break). It didn't fall down on him - thank god - but I couldn't believe what I was seeing as both of his parents watched him do it without a second thought.

Since then, I have a somewhat different position on kids in the house. They're welcome to every party I throw all summer long, but come winter, someone else is going to have to host when kids are involved.

Reading into your post a little more than some of the previous commenters have tried to do (jeez people...) I think you're faced with two problems.

First, you're a student. You obviously are going to need a place to work. Presumably, you'll have your own room and, since it sounds like this is going to be a long term arrangement, I assume you'll have some license to do what needs doing there, but as a 28 year old myself, I can't imagine packing my whole life into a single room anymore, so I imagine quarters will still be cramped. If there's not room in your bedroom for a desk - or if you simply find working and sleeping in the same space to be impossible - try to find a place in the house you can carve out as your own that won't be intrusive to your Mom's already-in-progress life. Maybe using a wardrobe will free up a walk in closet that can be come your zen work space, or perhaps there's a nook in the basement that could be brightened up with a (lot of) light and a throw rug. If that's not a possibility either...then I move to my next suggestion....

Your second problem are the shared spaces - the dining table, the kitchen counters, the end tables in the living room. I'm picturing your Mom's house sort of like I picture my Grandma's house - every time you sit down, you're afraid one wrong move will have you taking out a Hummel with an errant elbow. I'm not quite that bad, but I do tend to "live where I live" and I live alone, so there is always a book, a tv remote, a notebook, and a pen on the coffee table. It drives my boyfriend absolutely batty to come over and have "things all over", but it drives me crazy when he puts all of the stuff away and I have to search for my favorite objects the next time I want to sit down. We learned to compromise with the magic of trays.

When he sits down on the couch, he picks up the tray off of the coffee table and slides it out of his way. He is then free to survey they coffee table and make sure to set is soda down in a spot thus far unmarred by water rings (to give everything a nice even frat house appeal.) When he's done, he puts the tray back and I don't go on a whining rampage at 10 PM because I reached for the TV remote and it's not there.

Everyone is right, you're in this with her and because it is her space, there's a certain amount you're going to have to swallow, but that doesn't mean you should have to be miserable either. In my experience, living with your parents is hard enough - there's no need to make it harder by peaking your anxiety over something as silly as clutter. You're never going to like looking at it, but you can at least find an easy way to move it.

A commenter above asked how it works with children who have larger age differences. I can't speak from the parents perspective, having none myself, but I did share a room with my younger brother from the time I was about nine (he would have been two.)

Moving him in that late was tough. The tweens are a time of tremendous, awkward, awful growth and sharing a bedroom with my baby brother wasn't ideal when friends from school found out (the completely imaginary horror of it all!). I remember a lot of broken CD's and missing bottles of nailpolish before my parents figured it out.

When he was about four, they installed a lock on the door and moved his toys into the living room. During the day, our bedroom was mine and he wasn't allowed in. At bedtime, our bedroom became a shared space. There were still some issues though. He liked to sneak is gameboy into bed and the sound effects drove me nuts. For my part, when I was about fifteen, I started to struggle with insomnia and couldn't sleep without the radio on. Between the noise and my tossing and turning, he had a few sleepless nights, I'm sure.

All told, we lived. Would it have been nice to have separate rooms - OH MY GOD YES - there certainly would have been a lot less fighting. I should also say though..we're 26 and 19 now and I know him better than anyone else on earth and he still can't successfully lie to me. (Kid can lie his butt off, but when he tries to lie to me, he bursts out laughing.) We've bonded over our many shared nights, but I spent a LOT of time kicking the mattress on his bunk to get him to stop wiggling :P

I just died when I read that hard drive stat. I have 3.5 terabytes of storage (on three drives) - with about 1 terabyte free between them. Mind, this is a desktop, but nevertheless... Speaking to the issue at hand, however, my boyfriend recently went iLife and he struggles with the storage space available. Until recently, he was part of my, shall we say, massive storage network and it's been an adjustment. For an on-the-go machine, like my netbook, sure, that's plenty of storage space, but as a desktop replacement, that's only enough space if you have a personal server laying around...

On the "would I want this in my livingroom?" question - thats probably a no. But, it totally wins in the "would I prefer this to a regular radiator in my living room?" column it totally wins.

We're techy people and we have three squids on one wall of our living room alone. One to control the TV and video game set up (whose extra long cords are all tie wrapped in blue - tv - pink - wii - green - xbox - and yellow - game cube) and two for my pc and audio setup...

The best thing about squids isn't that they save you from one lost outlet, it's that when you need to get behind the computer or the tv, the outlet stretches to you rather than you having to dislocate a shoulder to get to it.

it's funny, because my nori and my rose water get plenty of use, but the single frozen pizza we bought when we moved it was there for a full 10 months before we got hungry, cooked it and then realized we hate frozen pizza and tossed it.

Not to beat a dead horse - but the kind of college kids who have parents that can and will afford to spring for this bed don't live in small dorm rooms :P

I guess, for me, your living room can be as big a mess as you want it to be - as long as there is room for me to sit down without shoving something out of the way, I'm OK with that - but I'm not eating at your house if your kitchen is covered end to end in flour and soy sauce.

I know when we have company, I always make it a point to wipe down the sink (basin, faucet, back splash and surrounding counter space), all of the counter-top cutting boards and butcher blocks, and the stove top - even if i'm still cooking and making messes - because while I may know that your chicken never touched the wooden butcher block because I used the little acrylic cutting board, you don't and you have no idea how long those crumbs have been there.

We love the Ikea glass Burken jar's for storing dry goods.

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/50081452

We keep the larger sized jar's on the counter for wheat flour, brown sugar, white sugar, powdered sugar, ap flour, rice and homemade "bisquick" (for pancakes and etc...) and I've never had a problem. The brown sugar even stays moist and, for the price, they can't be beat.