Today we discovered that it was important to have things to move to the new house. We did not want to arrive with what we had after the fire, nothing. It gave us both shivers to think about it.

We have lived in empty houses before. When we moved to Alaska we slept in sleeping bags on a nice air mattress and sat in lawn chairs for 5 weeks until our stuff got there on the barge. When we moved back to the lower 48 they came overland so it was only 3 1/2 weeks. Even moving here we were without furniture for nearly two weeks due to snow storms.

The difference in camping out in an empty house waiting on the moving van and sitting in an empty house is that in one case the van is coming with your stuff and in the other you could wait 100 years and your stuff would not arrive. We decided that we need a fair amount of stuff to arrange and put away if we were going to feel like we were moving into a house rather than walking into a place with vacant rooms where your voice echoed and nothing was defined.

So I got that sweeper-steamer I found today for 50% off. In fact, I got two. I got one for each floor. Doing that is a luxury but for us is also a safety issue. Lugging them up and down the stairs is not as convenient safe for us as it used to be.

A while back I found a huge sale for which I had coupons and I bought window treatments for each and every room in the house, all for about $10-12 per window including hardware and curtains. I felt stupid buying so many curtains for a house we don’t even have but at the time had begun on the trail that came to fruition today, that we needed to walk into a place that looked like us. I does not need a lot of stuff but a sweeper-steamer seemed like a good idea.

Lamps. Lamps seem to be the March Sale thing. We live in a lamp store. We have lamps. We read and grade papers and looks at maps. That takes light. We have light.

We also have something I have wanted for years, a towel warmer. In the UK they provide (a) the bathroom heat, (b) a  clothes drying rack that works at an impossibly fast rate. Wash your unmentionables in the afternoon when you come in from a hike and you can wear then, dry, when you go out to dinner. Oh, and yes, they provide warm towels. They are expensive $300 to thousands which pretty much ruled them out for us. I found them for $100 each and got 3% rebate and no shipping. I thought they might be horrible junk but they look pretty good. Here’s hoping they work as well as they look. Even if they don’t work well we will be able to see our towels with all the well-working lamps.

So, it is a lamp store. Let there be light. We need light. That light shines in the darkness, yet the darkness did not overcome it (John 1:15. Holman Christian Standard Bible (©2009)). We need light to lighten the darkness and show us the way home.