TIPsgiving and the reveal of the list book

Every year I have the great joy of reuniting with an amazing group of friends for what we call TIPsgiving. This proclaimed holiday, which originally occurred in November (hence the name) and has begun to creep toward the early part of the year, is a very important day of the year: it's when we come together, cook an incredible meal (well, mostly we let one friend with incredible kitchen skills handle this task), play a ton of games, drink delicious beer and wine, and sit around telling stories and making one another laugh. This year was no different.

One topic for some discussion was, of course, my recent decision to try to buy a home in 2012. Among the many details I laid out for my people was one very important part of this whole process: the list book. I am a list maker. Everything I do is list-based. If I don't have it on a list, it isn't a thing. A few years ago I started keeping list books - essentially, this was a system for keeping track of notes - things to look up on Wikipedia, jewelry to research on Etsy, movies to find on Netflix Instant, books to add to my wish list on Amazon.com, et cetera. As I got into a well-scheduled long-distance relationship, our weekends in one another's city made their own list. I keep my work to-do list separate because it matters to me that my work-related anxiety and my personal anxieties do not overlap.

As I mentioned before, the HPAP process is a lengthy one. That combined with the prevalence of short sales in DC makes me think the first-time homeowner process isn't going to be a quick one, which leads to the need to not invest immediately in looking for The Place, as the likelihood of finding one and not being able to move on it before I'm cleared to buy anything is high. I'd rather not know at all about The Place if someone else is just going to snap it up.

Enter the list book! The end of 2011 brought the end of one volume of lists (coincidentally; I don't keep lists by year - I'm not that anal retentive...yet) and inevitably my 2012 lists thus far have had the implied end-to-the-title of "...for my future home." Existing lists include:

• items to complete my HPAP paperwork (duh)
• questions about owning a home to which I don't know the answer
• games (board and card) that I want to buy*

After this wonderful weekend of delicious food, the next list I'm working on is "food to stock a grown-up kitchen." My current kitchen is laughable - it's barely big enough for one person to use to boil water, let alone seriously cook. As such, I mostly use it to store kitchen items and refrigerate food, and one of the things I most look forward to about homeownership is a kitchen worthy of a homeowner. This is definitely on my "necessity" list - for whenever the time comes that I can actually start touring.


*This, of course, is in many ways an outgrowth of the TIPsgiving tradition.