Back in the day….

As I swabbed off the top of my dryer recently — not a normal procedure, since I don’t really care whether the laundry room is dusty or not — memories of our first house in Greenville came rushing to mind.

Back then, I not only dusted the top of the trusty Maytags, I also disinfected them daily. See, our kitchen was miniature, probably smaller than our guest bathroom now. The washer/dryer hookups were in the kitchen; thus the W/D provided a couple feet of very valuable counter space.  I chopped plenty of onions on that washer! lol  Baking was the worst — flour got everywhere.

Life in the 20’x20′ cottage was uber. A perfect ‘first house.’
Back in the day …

• when we got back from our honeymoon, our dear friends had kindly unloaded all our wedding gifts into the house and stocked the pantry with a few staples. They also went around labeling all household furniture and surfaces with sticky notes in different languages. haha
• we never locked our front door. Ever.
• we had only one outside door. And 6 windows. LOL
• we took down the bedroom door from its hinges because 1) we didn’t really need it and 2) the bedroom was so small that you couldn’t open the door into the bedroom once we got a queen-sized bed!
• The door went into the attic along with everything else we couldn’t fit downstairs.  A lot of books up there. A lot.
• putting up a Xmas tree required creative geometry. (We usually disassembled our table during December.)
• we owned a W/D and our friends next door owned a dishwasher, so we each used the others’ appliance as needed.
• we’d come home to find a random college friend folding laundry on our couch.  If they were a really GOOD friend, they also were cooking supper. 
• we packed about 20 people into our tiny living room one time for a party.  So awesome.
• we lacked good A/C, so when Jeff & Kirsten moved out next door, we sneaked over there and took theirs (which was the university’s) and installed it in our living room window. Ah, relief!
• we laughed the time Jeff was watering his lawn sitting on the hood of his truck after church (since honestly, the yard was small enough that you could spray the whole thing from one spot) and soaked Jeff Stegall (on purpose) as he drove by on his way home from Sunday dinner!
• we also laughed at Jeff Stegall’s secret plan to quietly install a swimming pool under the very nose of Provost Smith and against campus housing regulations… he was going to call it a “rain cistern.” hahaha
• the time Jeff came over and begged to have the beat-up antenna someone had left in our attic because he was desperate to watch March Madness b’ball games, and Kirsten wouldn’t (yet) give in to let him order cable…..  he managed to pull in a very fuzzy basketball game.  Kirsten eventually relented. 
• Mrs Harris invited us to that Christmas party for the neighborhood. We and the Alexanders were the only two couples there under the age of 45, I believe. Most people were in their 70s and 80s and discussing ‘back in the day when the university first moved to greenville in 1947’ (!)
• speaking of Mrs Harris — remember “The Eye of RA”?  …. I think we’ll put that on the tree this Christmas just so people have to ask. haha
• we contributed to the destruction of several marriages by teaching our friends how to play Settlers of Cataan.     Thus far, no one has won a game faster than John Ingold, who beat us & Dawn in about 20 minutes. Still bitter about that one….
• I can’t tell you how much I miss Jeff’s “boss burgers” cooked on his grill. Those were the best….

Good times.