Domestic Awesomeness
Everyone knows the good things about owning your own home: you don’t “throw away” money on rent, you can make improvements to your living space and it’s actually worth it, and you “build equity,” whatever that is.
But here are other benefits that I’ve recently realized and continue to realize during my first month of home ownership.
1. Holiday Decorations
When you live in an apartment, you’re lucky if you can drag a Christmas tree up the stairs and through the door with less than 25% needle loss. Or, maybe, if you’re very lucky, you can fit an artificial tree box in your closet, assuming you have nothing else to store. Now that I have a house, I can have a fifteen-foot Christmas tree, if I want. And an artificial tree in my garage. Shoot, I can have three Christmas trees up, all year long!
For Halloween, we’re going to have pumpkins all over the front yard. And those little Indian corns, too. I could even make a haunted house in my garage and have a freaking party! I could buy one of those giant spiders and put it on my roof. At the apartment, we kept this plastic skull in the closet year-round because thumbtacks wouldn’t hold it and I was too scared to piss off the property managers by nailing it to the door. Screw that – now I can nail skeletons, Easter bunnies, American flags, turkeys, or whatever the hell else I want all over the door, then when it gets too hole-y, throw the door away and buy another one!
I don’t know if I’m going to be as hardcore as my cousin Helen, who has tons of decorations for every single holiday including Arbor and Columbus (just kidding but almost). The beauty of owning a house is that I get to make that choice for myself.
2. My Own Personal Storage Unit
I’m talking, of course, about my garage. Do I feel like putting my car in my garage? I don’t know. Maybe. Or do I want to fill it, instead, maybe, with my boyfriend’s dad’s cast-off furniture? Maybe. Where am I putting my dead bodies and three artificial xmas trees from now on? Hello – in my garage!
3. My Own Dirt and Grass
I can totally start a mink ranch in my backyard. I can totally get some chickens and a goat. Then eat them!
4. Noise
We can play Dance Dance Revolution again! We can play Playstation Karaoke again! We can take up riverdancing in the privacy of our own home!
5. All New Threats and Guilt Trips
Now, instead of saying, “Wipe the seat! Do you want the apartment people to keep our deposit because you couldn’t be bothered to aim it in the bowl??” I can say, “Wipe the seat! Do you want to build equity with pee stains on it???“
6. Everything Is Green
From now on, if I want to buy green couches and green curtains and paint the walls green, and then buy wooden chairs from garage sales and paint them green, and then buy a Ronco food drier and dry a bunch of grapefruit and apple slices and festoon my green walls with them, then my ex-husband can’t say SHIT about it!
Oh, wait… I’m getting confused. That’s not a benefit of owning a house. That’s a benefit of getting divorced and then owning a house.
See? It’s even awesomer than I first realized. Thank you, God, Baby Jesus, Virgin Mary, Santa Claus, and everyone else who helped.
