Love and Squalor: A Photo Journal

I’m sure you’ve read my lengthy and oft-blogged complaints about our temporary home for the summer. Maybe you’ve read them, and wondered what the big deal is? Or why I’ve been whining so much. Allow me to take you on a tour of our “home” and illustrate for you some of the finer features of our life in transition…

Above is our bedroom. We sleep on a mattress on the floor, use a cardboard box as a night stand, and share, between the four of us, one dresser — two of the drawers no longer close, and one doesn’t have a handle. We also have a selection of 12 hangers in the closet that I bought at a dollar store… for our “good” clothes.

In the corner of our room is Nic’s “desk.” From here she manages our finances and deals with the various immigration tasks necessary for our children to become Canadian citizens. Note the spacious keyboard area — if you hit the space bar too hard, the whole thing will launch onto the floor.

Next door, just the other side of a paper-thin wall, is Ben’s room. He’s afforded two suitcases for his clothes, and a tub full of toys. He enjoys throwing all of these things around the room.
Abi has no bedroom. She takes her morning nap in Ben’s room, her afternoon nap on our bed, and sleeps at night in the living room.

Here is our fine dining room, where the whole family gathers around the fold-up card table. Except we only have one pot and one pan, so we haven’t really dined on anything too fine — although Nic did pull off a roast beef one night.

And finally, my respite from the world. My little carved-out fortress of solitude, where I spend 8-10 hours a day working: the office. One of the girls from whom we’re subletting needed to leave her stuff here for the summer, so aside from the fold-up table I use for a desk, there’s a bed where we store the things that don’t fit anywhere else, and the boxes for the things we are using.
I’m sure you can see why we’re so reluctant to move… unsure if any residence could beat this one in terms of space or luxories. Why just the other day, as we moved a pack and play into the office so that we could enjoy a few quiet moments alone, I was commenting on how much fun its been to live here…
Yup, its going to be hard to drag ourselves away from here to a place with 3 useable floors, 3 bedrooms, a garage, a backyard and a hot tub. I’m sure we’ll shed a tear or two as we walk, one last time, down the 42 stairs leading up to our little apartment.
Or maybe not.