Lights Out

At the end of last year, sometime just before our wedding, the light fixture in our bedroom closet went out.

Of course, I climbed up on top of a chair, thinking it was just another burnt out bulb, but that wasn’t it. It was the fixture. As I bravely unscrewed the (unbeknownst to me) ten-inch-long screw holding the thing to the ceiling, thinking that I’d just pop over to Home Depot for a new one, I began to realize that it wasn’t going to be that easy. The wires didn’t look like the normal color-coded wires I’ve seen before. I thought…this may be more than I want to attempt when Steinvic is away. Wrist hurting from unscrewing, I screwed the fixture back on.

We’d have called an electrician…after all, we have three outlets out and would like to replace the fixture in our little dining nook. But that costs money and every month there is something (not just obligations, but other things we’ve chosen to do, like go to Chicago…) and so we haven’t gotten around to it.

Then last week, the kitchen light fixture conked out, literally blowing two of the bulbs as it went. We’re not brave enough to do anything electrical…I’ll DIY just about any house project, but not electrics.

Our condo is a bit outdated. It could use a little new everything. We keep up on laundry and dishes and sweeping and mopping and dusting. We clean the carpets, paint the walls and try to keep up on purging and reorganizing, but it’s a challenge.

Part of it is that I’d emergency moved from my old house to my parents, and put everything in storage without really rummaging through all of it. When I moved to the condo, I schlepped it from storage to this condo and have since tried to make heads or tails of it as I could between our long-distance commutes and working all the time. And when Steinvic moved here last year, he purged, best he could, but again…speed packing after work hours wasn’t easy.

AND, we have no storage to speak of.

So…we have to stay as organized as possible. I’ve been trying to work (in the dark) in the bedroom closet so that hopefully next month, we can afford the $500 - $1000 it will cost to repair it and all the other electrical stuff that keeps going wrong in our place.

Saturday and Sunday, I took about an hour each day to go through drawers, purging, and to fix the broken shoe rack in the dark closet. I reinforced the rungs with plastic tape. I know…kind of ghetto, but you do what you can and it seemed to work just fine.

Last night before bed, I went in the closet and saw this:

At first I thought the sprit of the disembodied squeaky foot toy my StepDad brought our pup on Sunday had taken over our closet, but then realized that it was just my stupid luck. I am just so disgusted. (and so are those bunny slippers! Just look at their little faces.) Seriously! So, tonight, I’m stopping looking for some organizational tools so that hopefully the closet won’t look like a disaster area (far worse than the picture portrays).

It will still be dark, but not as scary.