Sex Offender Registry and Your Decision

I Googled the town of the Estate House to see what would come up.  The first link was for "sex offenders".  Well, that is good information to know.  It turns out there are 4 in the town.  One lives about 3 blocks away from the house.  I then decided to Google other towns and see how many sex offenders there were.  In the town we currently have Mike's condo - the ratio to citizens is 1 in 850.  In the town of the Estate House, 1 in 1250.  In another town I really like, there are 18 registered sex offenders, 1 in 2500.  When I looked at the list of offenses, all but one of the 18 were for child sex crimes!  As someone who works in the field of helping children who are exploited and abused, it's appalling that there were so many child sex abusers in that town.  It made me sad to think about the society we live in today where it is so common.  It's more prevalent than we think.  If anyone you know is committing these crimes or a victim of these crimes, please get help!  The cybertipline at cybertipline.com is a great resource.  You can make reports there, anonymous if needed, about what you have observed and give the information you have.  Please report it.  Don't be a bystander that doesn't make a step.  Recent news stories have shown that you are culpable if you don't step in to help a child when you see them being abused.  DO NOT LET THIS HAPPEN TO ANYONE AROUND YOU.  It's sad (an inadequate word) and my heart goes out to every child who has a life wrecked and innocence lost at too early of an age.

To tie this back into house hunting:  Do your due diligence and make sure your potential future house is NOT next door to a sex offender.  I wouldn't live next to them, even if they have "done their time".  There are studies that show the offenders are prosecuted for 1-2 victims but in reality have hundreds of victims they are never prosecuted for.  Make sure you are comfortable with the town and neighborhood you are looking at living in.
Sex offender registries are available through many online sources.  The source I used was, City-Data.

7 Ways to Precycle, Upcycle, and DIY Your Way to (Almost) Never Recycling Again

TLC wrote an article about ways you can upcycle your home.  I thought there were some great tips in this blog, "7 Ways to Precycle, Upcycle, and DIY Your Way to (Almost) Never Recycling Again".
1.  Buy in Bulk - this tip suggests that going to the Big Box stores like the one Mike calls my favorite store aka Costco, help with recycling because you have less packaging.  I never thought about it that way.  We live in a small one-bedroom condo until we find our house.  It's hard for us to buy things in bulk.  I've added baskets to go above the kitchen cupboards, allowing us to hide all the extra things we have.  We also have a plethora of paper towels because we bought them on sale and in bulk.
2. Ditch Disposables - this is about subsitituting single-use items with cloth and other items that are washable.  I'm guilty of using these items.  When I babysat my 5 nieces and nephews last week, I had them use disposable cups, plates, bowls and utensils.  If we hadn't, we would have run the dishwasher 2+ times each day.  I seriously wonder if the amount of water we saved from washing the real dishes would equal the cost of the disposable items.  This is where the being green comes in.  We didn't reduce our carbon footprint by using these items.  I'm still curious about the water usage vs. the cost of the items we used. Any thoughts?
3. Upcycle - this is my favorite tip. It's the whole purpose for this blog.  I love finding new ways to use things.  I love watching Pinterest for ideas on upcycling and making things look like they are from fancy stores.  For example, I love the toilet paper rolls being used for wall decor. I never would have guessed they could become so fancy looking.
4. Think Outside the Kitchen - this is a tip similar to #1 - it's making us consider buying items that use less packaging.
5.  Stop getting junk mail.
6. Read your magazines & newspapers online. Another tip I'm guilty of ignoring.  I love magazines. A few years ago, when I moved to the northwest,  I was so excited to have a permanent home for more than one year that I finally allowed myself to buy magazines. I have boxes of magazines now!  I am convinced that I will use the magazines and organize the tips and ideas by topic and of course UpCycle some crafts out of all the ads that are in the magazines.  Of course, this is a someday project.  The space that my magazines take up might not be worth the keeping of them?  
7.Make your own - this is a tip I want to work on.  I've got a running list of diy soap, medicine, detergents, cleaning solutions that use natural products.  I really think this would be healthier and hopefully cheaper.  This is something I've put off doing until we live in something bigger than our 1 bedroom condo.  Someday soon, I HOPE!


Well, Mike and I are celebrating our 8th month of marriage today.  Mike made me a steak dinner and we're heading out to a movie in a few minutes.  Have a great weekend y'all.  Check out the full article on TLC here.

Drivebys and my Domineering Husband

Today, we drove by 5 houses that are for sale.  Here are our thoughts:

House 1: The 4 Acre House.  We went back to the one I saw in the dark on Wednesday night.  It'd be a great house but we really do strongly dislike the town it is in.  The town is super trafficky!  It's just claustrophobia.  For the house, is it worth it to live in a town you despise?  I don't know that it is.  As we drove onto the road of the house, a car coming the other direction motioned for us to roll down our window.  She asked if we lived there and then she realized we were coming to look at the house too.  There were 2 people walking around the house and looking at it.  It really looked like a great house and is kind of in it's own world.  BUT - can we live in that town and drive through it to get "home"?  Would "home" be "home"  when we hate the ride there and away?  Mike said, "I hate the house the farther I drive away from the house."

House 2: Freeway House.  This house, in description and shape, is exactly the craftsman type house I would love.  It's 2400+ Square feet and on an acre.  Sounds perfect right?  Well, it was on the corner of a freeway and a state highway.  The house was right up to the road.  If it was back into the acre of land, maybe it would have been better.  I was hoping we could look past the fact it was on a busy road, but driving by the house, there were gang symbols painted on the front porch and it really was in a horrible location!

House 3: Dead Street House.  This house is in the same town as the Freeway house.  When we drove up to it, I noticed it was 1 block away from a tractor store.  Nothing against tractors, I just don't want to live that close to a store.  The biggest thing we noticed was the fact that the house across the street and 3 other houses were for sale or vacant.  Why did everyone want to move from that street?  Well, we didn't want to live there.  It backs up to the freeway that ran by house #2.  Not really the type of place I'd like to live.

House 4: Estate House.  I added this house to the list because it was on the way home. I hadn't written down the address but I remembered it was close to city hall, a park and a senior living center. We changed the direction into our TomTom GPS (called Homer because Mike downloaded Homer Simpson's voice) as city hall of the town and then started wandering around.  We found the house!  It was bigger than Mike was expecting and it was by far our favorite of the night.  It goes to the possible list.  The story with this house is it's an estate sale.  The floors are old but I know that it's had some updating like a new roof in the 90s.  They do mention that it might not qualify for regular financing due to crawl space issues.  I'm not sure what that means.  I'm hoping it does qualify for a conventional loan.  Knowing that the inside style hasn't been updated, means we have the potential to cosmetically update it.  Also, it has 400 square feet of attic space that could be finished into liveable space.  That would make this house a 1700 square foot house with a 2 car garage, shop space and 2 carport spaces.  It was on a quiet street but close to everything.  It's about 8 minutes farther away from family than we live now, otherwise, it's an option.

House 5: The Illusive House.  This house is in the town we currently live in, actually, it's about 3 miles north of where we live (therefore closer to family).  I searched houses today and this one showed up as being added to the MLS today.  It was super cheap and just sounds like it would be perfect.  It doesn't make sense that it would be so cheap.  There were no pictures of the house online yet.  I went to google maps and saw that from the street it has large trees in front of it's property so you still can't see what the house looks like.  It was getting dark but we drove over.  as soon as we were 1 mile away and turned to go into the neighborhood, Mike says, this is not a good area.  We drive by the house and we still can't see it.  But Mike goes, "NO, this is like the RB area (there have been two shootings since we looked at a house in the RB area).  Your domineering husband is saying no to that house."  So, there you have it.  My husband, who is the furthest from domineering, said no.  I have to listen to him (this time).