The Nesting Instinct Kicks In

As I sit here taking a break to let the fumes of flowery all-natural bathroom cleaners dissipate, lots of things are weighing heavily on my mind. We've people coming over tomorrow: Clean the bathrooms and sweep the floors! Gotta get that cake baked! Am I really going to get around to vacuuming out the car today? Oh man, we really need more furniture, where are we going to put all our books and all the baby's things!?

That last sentence comes to me with greater frequency daily. We will have enough to take care of the baby when the time comes, including every baby necessity. We've got a dresser with two deep drawers that are already Packed To The Brim with baby stuff. But other than the floor, where will we put the rest of it? We've had a dearth of furniture since we moved into the house, as most young couples do. Which until now has been no problem -- we are slowly purchasing quality pieces over time, as there's no rush for just us.

...Except that having a baby on the way makes the desire to unpack the boxes and put things in their proper places a *lot* stronger for me. I don't want to resort to cheap plastic bins from Family Dollar to store all of the baby's things if I don't have to. And boy have we needed bookshelves -- we've both been saving and collecting books for our children for Years (literally!) and it'd be nice to have somewhere to put them (any of them!!) Some books for older children are on a couple shelves in our meager-looking first floor library (our 2 tall and 3 short bookcases do not do it justice), but I'd love to have a dedicated bookcase in the kid's room for all our baby and toddler books plus other nursery items that are best stored on shelves. At the moment, the only place we have for even one of them is on the windowsill.

And while we're at it... I've been looking for a decent, affordable bookshelf for our bedroom for months now. That would be so much more convenient for us bookworms than our tiny side-table shelves and my half-assed attempts to hide the 5 books I tend to read at once under the bed LOL!!! They just end up scattered across the floor by my slippers. A shelf would be handy!

With all of this - plus additional furniture desires - pressing on the brain, I found myself with a strong desire to hit up some yard sales this morning. James had only one response when I broached the idea to him last night.

Chuckling, he said, "It's the Nesting Instinct kicking in!"

He's right! I hadn't even thought of that. But if my thoughts keep headed where they're headed, I'll be obsessed with getting more pieces of furniture in this place over the next few months. Seriously, every day it's more important to me. I can't help it. While I'm not a Clean Freak, I don't want the appearance or organization of my home to make me feel like I'm cutting corners where my child is concerned. Sterilite bins... while they have their places throughout my home, tucked under cabinets and into closets... would do that for me. I don't want Sterilite for my baby.

While a trip to 3 separate yard sales this morning yielded no furniture, we did pick up a $20 pop-up storage bin/toy hamper, bright pink and hardly used, for all of 25 cents. I'm temporarily satiated!! Temporarily. Holding off the insanity, more like. I mean, I got an e-mail coupon for my favorite local antique furniture store just yesterday... and damn if it were paper, it'd be burning a hole in my pocket.... ;)