Changing Our World For a Week

In a couple of weeks, we are going to take on something that we as a family have never done before. We are going to be hosting two girls in our home for a week.

These two girls are coming to the U.S. as part of a sister cities program between our town and Narita, Japan. Our daughter expressed an interest in being part of this program, and she's raised a fair amount of the money herself to be part of the contingent that will go to Narita in June. Of course, this intimates that there is a reciprocal arrangement, and yes, there is. That arrangement means that we ourselves will be hosting two girls from Narita, and they will be arriving in a couple of weeks.

On one side, this is exciting, and I'm happy that my daughters especially will probably enjoy this experience. On the other side, our house is set up for a family of five, it's not set up for anyone else, and over the next couple of weeks, I am going to have to make some changes to more effectively accommodate this. The first thing I'm doing is I am vacating my office for the time being. In addition to vacating as much of the closet space as I humanly can, I'm also relocating my office and the materials that I actively use so that they will have room to relax and call home in a reasonable, if not ideal, setting.

This is also a chance for me to see how I will do during this down time away from my so called "essentials". I've often long wondered if I could be effective with just a laptop and little else. This coming "habitation change" may help me see if I really can do that. Also, I've often talked about the ability to "do more with less". While I'm not willing to just get rid of a lot of stuff, it will be interesting to see what items are really good materials for both utility and reference, and how much is nothing more than dead weight.

Anyway, back to cleaning, de-cluttering, and de-junking. This time, it's not just for me, it's for people flying from half a world away. Talk about motivation :).