When I was a child, my family took regular trips from rural Oregon to the wildly exciting big city of San Francisco. My parents had a biennial business meeting there, which provided the occasion to bring the whole family and explore all that this wonderful city had to offer. We bicycled through Golden Gate Park, had tea in the Japanese Garden, dined on exotic food in wonderful restaurants, visited museums, walked on the beach,drove over the Golden Gate Bridge, and always went to Chinatown.

Of all that we did there, the memories of Chinatown are the clearest and most fascinating. I bought little umbrellas for drinks once. We stared with a combination of horror and fascination at the dead ducks and chickens, in their entirety, hanging plucked and ready to take home and cook. We admired the intricately carved ivory, the elegant tea sets, and the flowing silk kimonos with dazzlingly embroidered flowers and dragons, that beckoned from the shop windows. But the most precious possession I had as a child was the wooden puzzle box my father bought for me. In order to open it, I had to perfect the exact order and number of moves of the secret sliding panels. And only then, Voila! the box would open and reveal its precious treasures. Perhaps it is the perfect archetype of so many of life's complications that makes this box such a treasure.

And in our current situation of moving into and beginning the process of renovation, we have a perfect example of where the lessons of this box come into play.

We saw the house, sitting near the water of the Penobscot Bay of Maine, for about fifteen minutes, thinking we might rent it. Eventually. Two days later, on our drive home from Maine to Tennessee, we called the Peg, our realtor, and initiated the process to buy it. Less than two months later, we owned it and moved in. It is 2400 square feet--plenty big enough for the two of us and our occasional visits from family and friends. However, we brought enough stuff for two houses of 2400 square feet even though we sold and gave away literal truckloads of stuff. We downsized. We didn't come close to downsizing enough.

After a week of unpacking all day long every day, filling up every conceivable space, we were still trying to find a pathway through the boxes to navigate from room to room. We were seriously over our minutes on our cell phones. We had no internet connection and were mostly unable to hop onto a very weak signal of our neighbor who had an unsecured connection. (Thank you, whoever you are, but could you just do a better job of keeping that connection up and running?) We couldn't find the one box that was marked MOST IMPORTANT that contained our coffee maker and wine opener. I never really appreciated wine makers going to screw tops before, but now I do.

And we started gathering names. In the second week, we had an out of work painter and his son-in-law move all of our remaining carefully marked boxes up to the fourth bedroom of our house. It no longer seemed relevant that they were assigned to "Dining Room" or "Kitchen". It just seemed imperative that we get them out of our space. We are living with whatever got opened first and seem to be doing fine without the rest. In fact, I don't really know what's in them.

The good news is that the house seems to be structurally sound. At least the room upstairs is supporting all of those boxes for now. The barn was not so fortunate.

In our second week we also found Ed. Ed has become our all around fixer and the first thing he pointed out was that the barn was pulling away from the house and that the supports that had originally been there had been removed through the years and there were some serious concerns about what was actually holding it all up. Especially considering that we used the second floor of the barn to store a whole lot of other things that didn't fit in the house.

This is probably an ideal moment for anyone to point out that perhaps we have held onto too much stuff. No argument there. The question is, however, which of the stuff is the too much part. Since we don't really know how all the rooms will work, we are not sure which things we will need and which things we will not.

And on top of the stuff part, there are three major renovations that need to go on. Well, three that need to be done and one more that we would like. We need a new kitchen, a new master bath, a fireplace and a finished third floor. Here is where the puzzle box fits in.

As we say something like, "Let's just call Larry and see if he can start the third floor now", then the other of us will say, "Well yes, but don't we want to make sure we have the wiring done for the second floor before we close up that floor upstairs?"

"Okay, Let's call the electrician."

"Do you know what we need for hookups for the bath and laundry room upstairs?"

"Right. Lets get that plan done."

"Of course we have to know where the chimney is going and also have the kitchen plan in order to route the plumbing from down to up and up to down."

"Right."

And on it goes.

We could call an architect. Our experiences of that in the past do not lead us in that direction, as common sensical as it might seem. Is "sensical" a word? Well, I think it makes sense.

So we think about it and then give it another try ourselves. In the meantime, I found a chat line that discusses problems with renovations and their solutions and learned about a barn mat that we can place under the upstairs washer and dryer that will help to absorb the vibrations from spinning. It sounds like it will be perfect just as soon as we know where the washer and dryer will go, as soon as we know where the master bath will go, as soon as we know where the fireplace will go, as soon as we know how the kitchen is going to work, and whether we need to move the basement stairs or just the door to the stairs, and do we keep the little powder room...