If you’ve had children who are 20-something, you probably recognize this routine:

Grieve when they graduate high school, move them to college, insert several years of school and several moves in here. Okay, maybe one move back home, then another out. Love develops, marriage ensues, graduation happens, and then? Another move – THIS time into their first home…the summary of my eldest’s last few years.

If you take that first paragraph and move around the sentences, delete college and insert hair school, no marriage yet, move into a rental home with roommates, and add helping with fix-it jobs around the home, then we’ve summarized my second child’s life. And, if you’ve been through this process at least once, you know your own home may, at times, serve as a furniture exchange service and holding company.

When relatives die, the furniture gets divvied up among the family members.  A pair of aunts or an uncle look a piece of furniture up and down, talk amongst themselves, then declare, “Here, THIS table might be good for Rylee when she moves out.”  Thus, a Duncan Fyffe table and chairs, plus matching occasional tables gets put where?  You got it.  Into the Mick and Kelly Roberts furniture depository (MKRFD).

Another relative or perhaps my child is at a garage sale and spies a “can’t-refuse” deal that will go nicely in the bedroom “whenever they get their own home someday,” and forthwith the piece is shipped to the MKRFD (single-car garage wing) and logged into the inventory for future withdrawal by said child.

Curiously, however, children continue to grow and make their way into the world and suddenly, days like today come along.  Promptly withdrawn from the MKRFD this morning was: a dining room table and chairs we’re giving the kids as a housewarming gift; Rachel’s bed she’s had since she was three or four, a painted and antiqued china buffet, four chairs we got from a business office giveaway, a micro-fiber sectional and matching pillows, an old antique dresser and mirror rescued from a great-uncle, and….

Wait. Our house can breathe…yes! On second thought…our house is empty!  You know what that means, right?  Time to redecorate!

And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is where I could use your help.  Over the next year or two, I’ll be redoing our two “now” guest bedrooms and creating a new office in what used to be a formal dining room.  The office project is first.  Here is a photo of the space:

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