I’m a little embarrassed to be complaining about this, but our house is too big for us. With all the kids and animals running in and out it’s a nightmare to keep clean, and lately I’ve started not even to try (some who’ve visited me here might be hard pressed to believe that I ever did try, but I did). There are just too many rooms and too many nooks and crannies that are perfect for stashing all the stuff I accumulate. Sometimes I manage to get it to a state of basic tidiness, but there’s no way I can keep up with all the windows and baseboards and not-quite-hidden crevices. I am convinced that I could easily make a full-time job of cleaning this place, and I’d probably get overtime most weeks at that.

Another problem with a house this size is that there’s so much wasted space. No matter how hard we try, the four of us simply can’t make good use of each and every room. In addition to the kitchen, living room, and one-and-a-half baths, we have five (soon to be six, courtesy of a new wall that’s due to be erected within a matter of weeks) bedrooms and a large 30-square-meter (325 square feet, give or take) open room that we call simply “The Big Room.” Of the six bedrooms, three are actually bedrooms, one is Olof’s office, one is ambitiously called the “movie room,” though we rarely watch anything there, despite the presence of a wide-screen TV and a surround-sound system, and the last one is officially the guest room, even though the only one who ever sleeps on the bed in there is the dog. We also have two large areas that are not-quite-hallways, not-quite-rooms and we’re doing exactly nothing with that space.

Because the house up until very recently doubled as a store, the kitchen and the living room, as well as two (soon to be three) of the bedrooms are upstairs, while the main bathroom is downstairs, which arrangement poses its own set of inconveniences. A major remodel is called for, obviously, but the time, and more important, the money, for such an enterprise are not so easy to come by. Nonetheless, Olof and I have passed countless hours drawing sketches and revising our plans for the house. I’ve been trying, rather unsuccessfully, to talk him into taking out a loan against the house to pay for the remodel, but he has the typical Swedish resistance to paying for anything on credit.

When I started this post, it was going to be about the couch we bought last week at the Salvation Army thrift store, but I guess I got side-tracked. Anyway, one of the results of living in such a big house is that my husband has been able to indulge his love of couches to the fullest. As of this afternoon, when he and his dad drove to town to pick up the new couch, we have five couches, and it seems we’re always on the lookout for more. I think his idea of happiness is a room with nothing but computers, couches, and Coca-Cola. His “three C’s,” apparently.