Last week we said goodbye to our second home in Rexburg! It was just as sweet and heartfelt as the time we said goodbye to our last home.
Our living situation this go around was actually quite interesting. Mitch and I are friends with a couple and about two years ago, we were both managing different apartment complexes. One night during dinner together, we were complaining about our jobs and wishing how the houses in Rexburg were cheaper so that we could stop managing but still have the space that manager's apartments come with. As we were talking, someone jokingly said that we would have to move in together and each contribute to rent for us to live in a house. We spent the rest of the night joking about it, but somehow we all left that night thinking, "We could probably do that with them... if we were to do that with anyone, they would be it..."
As the months went on, we started mentioning it more and more and our jokes started to become much more serious - "Well if we lived together, we would definitely need our bedrooms on different floors!" or "If we lived together, we would have delicious food every single night with two women cooking!"
Soon, someone just broke the ice and said, "If we were to actually do this, we would need to find a house that had two master bedrooms and maybe two living rooms..." and we started talking about what other requirements a house would need to have: food storage room, plenty of space for two household's worth of crap, enough kitchen space. We started going on walks together at night and would conveniently walk around looking at houses that were for sale and pick up their flyers and peruse them often together.
As it turns out, one day we were having lunch together and watching the LDS general conference, when the husband of that couple said, "There's an open house across town that ends at 2:00, we should go look at it and see what we think about it." We kept putting it off, but finally decided to just go check it out. When we stopped in, the open house had long since ended but the woman who owned the house was still there and let us in to see the house. She was shocked that we were looking into the house together. We jokingly assured her we were not swingers, just poor college students. As we walked through the house, Ali and I were amazed with it. It had two completely separate living spaces - the downstairs had its very own master bedroom, bathroom, and living room! The upstairs had its own master bedroom, bathroom, and living room! All of the "necessities" that we had been sharing as mostly jokes were coming to reality and we honestly couldn't pass up the opportunity.
We decided to just go for it and deal with whatever happened. People kept telling us that we would hate eachother from it, that we would lose an amazing friendship because of it, but it honestly was one of the best living situations I've ever had! We each had our own space, we had dinner together every night, and we even had chickens and a chicken coop. We were able to do so much together and Zane was able to be raised for almost two years with "siblings" which was the most wonderful part of it all. We laid out ground rules and were close enough friends that we knew how to communicate about issues. All four of us were willing to put in the time and effort of getting things done around the house, including chores, which we divided out in the very beginning.
Somehow, we were able to work out all of the kinks, kept a book of what we had spent so we could settle up each month, and we were able to work out who was cooking and who was doing laundry. The only part of this house that I didn't love was the red kitchen walls.
I'm sad to actually be leaving this house, the Kilpatricks, our own little space with a fenced in yard, a chicken coop stocked with 10 chickens, and the sweetest neighbors. Unconventional, yes. Growing experience, yes. Worth it, heck yes.
Here are some pictures of our space in our second home, mostly for me to go back and remember our time there.
