Family Madsen Blog: Our home

We've arrived - Thanks Lizzie for the cute flags!

When we first got to our new home here in Minnesota we had 5 mattresses on the floor. My Dad and Liz and our friends Josh and Julie had arranged for us to have mattresses and bedding so we could sleep here the first night. We were very grateful for this, but needless to say we had to get going on finding more things right away. A girl can't live without hangers for very long ;-)

First night slumber party in our room

First day breakfast table from some TV trays that were my Mom's!

Living room mess

When my Mom passed away my brother had put some of her things from her house into a storage unit, and he said we could use whatever we wanted of it when we came. So that was the first thing on our agenda. It was a very full unit, but we were able to go through it all in a couple of hours and find some gems. For example a little rocking chair we had out our house growing up, that Liam loves. And some nice pictures we could hang on the walls. There was also a lot of kitchen items like plates, glasses, mixer, toaster, tupperware, etc...all in red of course (her favorite color)...so we have lots of memories of her when we look around!

Later that day we went to a big rummage sale (a big garage sale - flea market type thing) in Wayzata. Right when we got there they had put everything down to 50% off! SCORE! We found so many great items to fill our house and paid less than $200 dollars. One of the biggest gems was a brand new bedframe so Benjamin's mattress could get off the floor for $2.50! We also found a perfect small sized high-top table for our kitchen - so we had some place to eat the first days! It has turned out to be the perfect breakfest nook! My Dad let us borrow his truck and we picked up all of our treasures!

See Liam is in the back of the truck with all our new things!

Big truck!

A little tight, but we can all fit!

The next few days we spent looking at thrift stores and garage sales...and also lots of trips to the Dollar Store and Target to find the remaining necessities. For example, hangers!! :-) :-) We also needed things to organize drawers and closets with. Søren was really enjoying all those details.

On top of all the shopping at stores, we found some real steals on Facebook Marketplace for $5-$10 dollars. A TV stand, 2 desks, curtains, a TV, and more. And we heard about a local Facebook group called "Buy Nothing" - where people are giving things away. These great items included a really nice couch for the boys basement play cave, a nice gas grill, and a different place gave us the propane tank for it, and probably more I can't remember! One of the funniest stories though is that we were on the way to another rummage sale and right as we were going out of our driveway Søren said, "Oh yeah, we could use a little bookcase for the boys room upstairs." We turned off of our road, and right on the side of the road by the curb was a perfect little book case!!! So we put that into our van (Another awesome story that we have been able to borrow my Aunt and Uncles's van for the first weeks here and it can fit A LOT of furniture, including dressers, desks and a full size couch!!!)...anyway we dropped off the bookcase and went out to the rummage sale. Then a few days later we were driving that direction again and there was another bookcase at the same place - that looked just like the first one!!! So we gabbed that too!

Yay, we got a couch!

Anyway, after 5 days of shopping, shopping, shopping the boys (and us) were sick of it, so we got a Amazon Prime free trial and ordered the rest of what we felt we really needed!!!! It arrived at our doorstep just at day or two later! (Except for Mary and Sørens bed which was for some reason delayed - and this did not sit so well for the Søren who exclaimed every morning having to get off the floor that "I am too old for this...")

So after 5 days we had pretty much our house in order and we could start to do other fun things like going to the beach, visiting friends, etc. Here and there we have been making improvements like Søren made some shelves for the kitchen cabinets, Silas put together his bedframe and had to cut the wooden pieces to fit, organized shelves and drawers. This past weekend we got around to putting up the pictures we had accumulated and gotten "from my Mom" and now we are ready to just enjoy!

Here is our new home!