Upstairs -- Downstairs

There have been so many things I have discovered loving about my new home. Some things were expected, like having my own washer and dryer, and some things have been surprises. More of a five minute shower kind of girl than a scented oil soaker, I would not have anticipated how much pleasure I have gotten from luxuriating in the bath, thanks to the small Jacuzzi style whirlpool tub in our master bathroom.

Getting settled has presented some challenges though, and our welcome to your new house mini flood (an overflow of rainwater into our basement from a spring thunderstorm), did not help matters.

After what seemed to be the longest day ever, moving day, my housemate and I set about establishing a feeling of normalcy. Or at least, we tried to. Perhaps that was too lofty a goal, yet, after a few weeks, it’s hard not to believe you should be able to retrieve your favorite spatula or find a scissors.

One of our first acts of making ourselves at home was to wire the big screen TV in the living room. Arranging the rest of our living room furniture – our couch, love seat, coffee and end tables, big chair, and area rug – followed shortly.

We set up our tooth brushes in the two bathrooms on our main floor (one set from each of our separate households), and found, then washed, plenty of towels to hang in each bathroom. We divvied up drawers and closet space. We wired the telephone and computers in our study and lined the kitchen cabinets then put away pots and pans, plates and glasses.

And during this time, these days of forging comfortable and functional living space on our ground floor, we deposited boxes, mentally labeled “look at later,” to the basement, or, as we’re trying to say, our lower level. Yes, the lower level was filling up with labeled and unlabeled boxes, extra lamps, plastic containers of photos, more than a year’s supply of cleaning agents, a huge storage basket of tennis balls, more than twenty extension cords, glassware that couldn’t fit in upstairs cabinets, an espresso machine, an ancient computer console, and musical instruments galore. While things looked especially well-settled upstairs, considering the brief duration of our residency, downstairs was CHAOS.

I remember when I was growing up, there was a BBC television show, Upstairs Downstairs, about two totally different worlds co-existing at the same upper middle class address in London around 1900. The upstairs stories were populated by the lady and gentleman of the house, their children, and their early predecessor to Desperate Housewives neighbors, and we were easily drawn in to their comings and goings. But we really grew to love the flippant Irish scullery maid, the observant and dryly sardonic butler, and the various characters that actually ran the house as members of the downstairs crew. Upstairs Downstairs was about class. In John’s and my home, at least up to this point, upstairs – downstairs was about order vs. chaos.

It became obvious to me fairly quickly that we needed both.

John needed to see we had permanent locations for our ironing board and coffee pot (for his morning brewing routine). I liked knowing that there were coasters in every room to prevent marring of precious wood furniture. Under such a disparity in vibes, one would think that we wouldn’t lead visitors downstairs to witness the disorder, yet that usually turned out to be the place in our new home that we showed off the most, that we were most proud of. It represented our creativity, chaos and all.

John’s guitars and pieces of his drum set were scattered throughout the lower level waiting for us to clean a small cement room under the front stairs (which we fondly call the “vault” or “bunker”) where he hopes to listen to his amped up self play. His recording equipment and synthesizer sit caddy corner from the Baldwin console I grew up with. I designated a spot for meditating against one wall and decided to fill another corner with a big chair and ottoman for reading and thinking. And the room itself was created out of a vision I had before we even saw the building; to have one big, open room, for social gatherings, small art shows, workshops. The seller and their contracting crew agreed to knock out a wall before we considered putting in a bid.

We love our downstairs! We want the room to be able to flow into different configurations for different uses, and we know that we will have to live here for some time before we’ll know how to arrange things. We know we need both the chaos of creativity and the order of routines to feel comfortable and happy.

Nurturing the pathways between our upstairs and downstairs lives can be a challenge and a great joy. Having some space where things feel predictable and space where you can frolic in a little mess is no small thing.