It Really Pays to Rent if You Have Kids.

The hubby and I are on our second house together. We purchased it four years ago after adding a fourth clown to the circus darling child. I bought the first house on my own when we first started dating and he and the oldest kidlet moved in about a year later. It was an awesome house. For one person. I had an extra room for nothing but storage, the basement had a disco ball and fresh carpeting for those Dancing Queen moments you have when you live alone and I could fit my mid-size car in the 1950’s one car garage with no problem.

Fast forward one year and we both had to park in the driveway due to all the shit he transported from an overstuffed apartment, all the bedrooms were taken up and all the storage was moved to a once pristine laundry room. It was quite a shock to go from living alone(with two cats) to three people(five on weekends, two other kidlets), 2 large dogs and rooms that looked like they were from the latest episode of Hoarders! Then my sanity left me. With good reason.

Fast forward another three years and we added our youngest, my first mini kidlet. Every room in our tiny house was packed. The baby’s room was next to our bedroom and right off the echoey living room. Every time the baby went down for a nap I turned into the Shush Nazi. Clearly, we would have to find larger digs. So we did. Brand spanking new four bedroom house with a full basement and a three car garage, moderately priced to be paid off when we went to the nursing home. Maybe.

So, the point of all this is to dissuade Moms and Dads from buying a shiny new home if you have kiddos. Rent if possible and definitely plan on losing that security deposit. You’ll thank me later. Here are the top ten house disasters that I have encountered from having kids and shiny new houses…although one of my favorite top three is actually from the old house but did involve a brand new sliding glass door.

10. Broken window number one thanks to a soccer ball kicked through a basement window exactly 3.2 seconds after oldest was told not to kick the ball towards the house. $100

9. Front door lock thanks to 100000 slams and/or forced openings with one kid inside leaning against to keep out kid #2 on the outside. $150

8. Mystery hole in the boys bedroom behind the door conveniently hidden with an old Xbox game unit, thanks to “I don’t know how that happened”. $??? not fixed yet.

7. Mystery crack in the boys bedroom window thanks to, again, “I don’t know how that happened”. I see a trend here. $???? not fixed yet.

6. Mystery paint scraped off of the hallway wall thanks to “soon to be announced” after kidlet interrogation.

5. Plugged up garage drain, which may or may not have been caused by the hubby, but since I always err on the side of caution, we’re gonna go ahead with one of the kids did it.

4. Mystery red stains on the floor of the boys room along with mystery brown, black and fluorescent green stains on same floor. Boys are icky. Luckily, they used my brand new vacuum to suck up some sick smelling nastiness that I have yet to get out of the damn thing. So this one counts as two…my damn brand spanking new carpets and my damn brand spanking new vacuum.

3. Staircase railing crashing down into the living room (almost landing on our then two year old) from rocking a leg back and forth forcefully on in while getting yelled at for breaking something else. $165

2. Sliding glass door…death by dart, 4.5 seconds after yelling at the oldest not to touch the darts. $1000

1. Garage wall, powder room, framework…death by automobile “mistakenly” driven through by throwing on the gas instead of the brake, again by the oldest. $500, thanks to insurance.

I didn’t even mention all the plugged toilets and sinks, fingerprinted walls, doors that don’t work properly, broken bed frames(no, not from the adults). I could go on and on. Half of the list is thanks in part to the oldest who is either unlucky or bent on leaving his mark on each house in which we dwell.

It really pays to rent if you have kids. Not only are they costly in diapers, clothing, schooling, toys, toiletries etc., but the repair bills will kill your bank account and your sanity.