Has much changed since my last update? Not really. But I do have something semi exciting I would like to share with y'all.
Our homestudy is rappidly approaching. It will be upon us by August 24th. I have already submitted my time off from work and am ready to go. The apartment complex is still under construction. That part really makes me angry because they barely do anything all day long and it seems like they act as if we are just supposed to make do with their laziness. I am getting tired of it. They were supposed to have finished a week and a half ago and now they are just being rude. They took a week off for no reason what so ever and I am getting tired of not being able to use my balcony to dry my clothes. It's a real pain. Anyway, the complex has been getting a fresh coat of paint, and things are starting to look more modern and match the interior better. With all this upgrading happening, though it may be inconvinient, has been causing me to really reflect about our home and what sort of things we need in order to prepare for this child. We have many items that are either broken or soon to be broken, and we have just been making do. You see, when I first moved to Japan, I had next to nothing. The landlords were at least nice enough to have bought me some brand new appliances. As nice as that was, I couldn't use them. What I mean is that I had a fancy new stove, but no pots or pans. I had a wooden spoon, a random tea set, and a bowl or two. Not really anything I could cook with. I remember one morning waking up to have toast and jam only to discover I had no way of toasting the bread, and no knives in which to spread the jam. I take it back, I did have one pot. But I discovered the hard way that it did not have any handles. I was sick too! I was trying to make myself some tea but couldn't because there was no way to get the water out of the pot without burning myself. Remember, I had nothing. Not even towels or oven gloves. Thinking back on the first few weeks here, I went shopping a lot just to buy things here and there. When I did that, I didn't care if it was used and almost broken, something was better than nothing. I also accepted a lot of junk from neighbors and coworkers. They were items that were going to have been scrapped anyway, but figured I would have a better use for it. All of my stuff is basically missmatched and random because, like I said, I had nothing and needed it. The only new thing that I had bought for myself was a bed because the one I was given was harder than the floor. I am not joking. I slept on the floor more than I slept on the bed because it was softer. Once I bought that bed, I was in heaven. It also was the only thing in the house that actually looked like it matched because I had purchased sheets I liked, pillow cases, the works. By the time Josh arived, we did more shopping of mostly used items to make our empty apartment more like a home. We were given a tiny kitchen table, with a broken chair. It needed to be pounded together everytime you used it, and we basically sat on a who-knows-where-that's-been office chair. It was comfortable, but the stains and smell left everything to be desired. And that is basically how we lived our life. We just got by with the bare minimum because we had to. Then as time went on, I guess we just never felt the need to upgrade because what we had was working just fine. It may look a bit cluttered, but "this is Japan." We would think. "Japan is so tiny, there is no way you canNOT be messy." Well, over the past few weeks, we have been thinking more and more, about how adding a child is going to change things for us, and we realized that our current way of living, is not going to keep working. In our bathroom, we have a shower, then next to the shower is a bathtub. We don't use a curtain because it doesn't matter. It's an enclosed space that all gets wet anyway so why bother? Most aprtments (not sure why ours doesn't do this) have built in shelves to store your shampoo and soap. Ours doesn't have such a feature so we have been plopping everything on the rim of the bathtub. This works just fine for us because we mostly shower anyway. When we did want to take a bath, we either moved all the stuff out of the way, or clumsily climbed over everything. See, this way of living doesn't bother us. It might seem strange to some, but to us, it works, so who cares. (One thing I never understood about our shower arrangement, is why they never built in those shelves. Japanese as a society, take baths over showers so you would think that it would be standard to have the shelves.) When we started to imagine bathing a child, that's when we realized that something has got to change. We barely can fit all our (mostly mine) stuff on the rim as it is. There is no way we will be ok with moving everything, all the time, and having even MORE clutter with child shampoo, toys, and soap. So we bought a wire shelf and installed it. It has freed up the space so much. The room also appears more clean. I started thinking, if such a small item can make that much of a difference, then maybe it is time we invested in brand new home items. So that's what we have been doing for the past couple of weeks. We have been going through each room, jotting down item after item of things that we need to improve our way of life and prepare for a child. I was expecting there to only be about 10 items but it turns out we have been cutting corners in almost every area of our lives. The process has shocked me. I hadn't realized how low our standard of living was. After having gone through everything, the only "modern" things we have in our home are my vanity, the TV, and the kotatsu. (I love that kotatsu). Josh and I have gone to a different store everyday for the past week, looking for the items we wrote on our list, as well as discovering other items we forgot about. A lot of the stuff is affordable even for us now, but there are some things that are quite pricey. We realize that we cannot afford all these items on our own, in addition to saving for adoption. Then it hit me! This great idea! I created an online registry of sorts for our adoption. I have been painstakingly adding each item from all the stores into this website, and making sure that they show up in English. If you want to check out our registry, you can do so by clicking here. Please note, that if you do wish to purchase something off my wish list, it will lead you to a Japanese only website. A few of the items are linked to global sites, but most of them are Japanese only. I understand that not all of you can read and understand Japanese, plus, some items cannot be purchased online. If you do wish to make a purchase, then please message me on any of my social media, or you can make a donation here and just add a comment specifying what your donation is for. I am really good about using ear marked money. Once it has been marked, I cannot, in good conscience, spend it on anything else other than what it was ear marked for. I am really excited about this registry. I have worked really hard. I hope you can make a contribution. If you can't, then please share the links with others on your social media! It will realy help a lot. I look forward to living a more simplified, and clean life. ;) Thanks for reading! #ItTakesAVillage
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AuthorJeny B Archives
August 2021
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