10/20/2006

Our House is a very very very fine house...

For your viewing pleasure, I've created a brief house tour video. This is for all those folks who are shocked/amazed/mortified that our family lives in ~750 sq ft of space. Of course, if we were in Japan, we'd probably have half this space and call ourselves lucky. But here in SoCal, our 'living small' lifestyle is definitely an anomaly.

The tour is limited to half of our home, so you'll miss about five bookshelves (primarily the kiddoes' books and our magazines and journals). TobyJoy decided not to make an appearance in the show (EllyCat is the star) and John, CatGirl and GameBoy were at school during the tour, so the house is pretty quiet. One note: I mention that the table in the LR is "my desk," well it's also the heart of our home. We eat meals, watch movies, play games, read books, pray, and entertain guests around this table. Even as I type this post, John and I are working on our laptops at the table, and CG has a whiteboard that she's drawing on at the table.

Our home is my very favorite place. There is a lot of love within these walls. It's not fancy, but it's home. :)


PS: kudos to John for helping me to compress the video for youtube!
PPS: Did you notice my oh-so-vintage-cool record player?? I'll play some of my 80s record collection for you the next time you drop by for a cup of tea :)

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi! I've sent this to Alison, Stacey, and Steven. I think you had a couch when Alison and I saw you in 2000. Your place at least looks organized! Ours is still in total chaos, but we'd love to have you come to Palm Springs and visit us any time! I've loved your posts about you and John, your anger, etc. I look back at the times when you, Stacey, and Alison lived with us in Irvine and knowing you and John before his baptism, his mission, being with you the in temple, carrying his box of letters up to Cardston and back and then to him, finally, with immense love for you both. You were the only ones to embrace Alison. She's doing amazingly well right now after nearly dying in Sept. 2005. Thank you both for all you mean to us. Love, Steve & Linda

jana said...

Linda:
Thanks so much for your supportive comment! Your love and friendship means a lot to us! We would love to visit your home sometime--let's touch base and get something on the calendar :)

We have had many couches in the past, but we just don't have space for one now. We also had a pair of wingback chairs in our LR for a long time, but I decided that their tall high backs weren't comfortable for extended bouts of reading, so I gave them away about two months ago. I'm hoping to come across a cozy overstuffed chair for the corner of our LR. But because I generally find my furniture on freecycle or in other free places, I may be on the lookout for awhile (which is fine by me, I'm not in a hurry).

Johnna said...

I've got 12 bookshelves too--I noticed your books look like you put labels on the spines. Do you catalogue your home collection? I keep wanting to do that, but I'm daunted.

jana said...

Yes, slowly over the past 3 years I have catalogued all of our books. I use a database called BookCollector to enter and track all of the books and I put stickers on their spine with their LOC number. Our hardbacks are shelved by LOC and our paperbacks and kids' books are shelved by the last name of the author.
Yes, it does take come time and commitment to do this when you have a lot of books, but it makes it so much easier to find the book you're looking for when you need it! Also, we no longer buy duplicate books because we can't remember if we already have a particular book or not, etc.

Brooke said...

I love it when you post your videos. Yay for the Remy Library! Someday I'll catalogue our books too...

Brooke said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
jana said...

Actually, I need to correct my earlier statement that we have _all_ of our books catalogued. Actually, we still have about 150 large-size books that aren't catalogued yet. That will be next summer's project :)