Nesting and planning

It's a big busy weekend. On Friday I rented a U-Haul and picked up a rocking chair we bought through Craigslist, and some furniture for our bedroom that will allow us to liberate some storage space that we need in order to clear out the baby's room. The rocking chair was quite the bargain: all hardwood for just $40.

Meanwhile, we continue to work on the room. What had been a spare room / office / music room / library needs to cease being all those things so those functions need to move elsewhere. First up, box up all our books and put them in the basement. When the time comes that we end up buying a house, we'll have more space and the books can come out again. With the books gone, the bookcases could go out on the curb, where they were picked up by someone in less than 45 minutes. You have to love San Francisco sometimes!

The music room aspect is less of an issue. Since I don't teach guitar anymore I really just needed to move one guitar. The rest found new homes, either elsewhere in the house or in my band's studio. A crate of guitar "bits" went in the basement, as did some empty cases.

The spare room simply ceases. As our friends C&C found before their baby was born, trying to retain spare room functionality means you're putting your occasional guests ahead of your own child which is ridiculous. If people want to visit, they'll need to find somewhere else to stay. That means we can sell (or give away) our futon.

Finally, the office functionality will be in flux for a while. The contents of our desk will go in a storage unit that we no longer use thanks to the new furniture from Friday's pickup. The desk itself goes into the basement and will go to the child when they're old enough. After that, it is simply a case of relocating a few other bits and pieces, and then the room will be ready for painting. Not bad, considering that we have 17 weeks to go.

The other thing that came up over the weekend was a discussion of childcare and schools. San Francisco is a notoriously difficult place to raise children. Childcare is insanely expensive ($1600 per month or more), and the public school system places kids by a lottery system. This means your child could end up in a school in a challenging neighborhood. This is in itself wouldn't be a bad thing, but scared (and predominantly white) families don't like this idea and break their backs to put their kids in private schools. As a result, the only kids in public schools are those from low-income families, a situation which tends to make for troubled learning environments where a teacher's first priority is simply maintaining peace in the classroom. This is a self-perpetuating situation. As long as kids from higher-income families go elsewhere, the schools will continue to be undesirable for those very families.

A trip outside SF to visit friends who are themselves expecting a baby took us to a town where these problems don't exist. Schools are better and childcare is at least 50% cheaper. House prices are not ridiculous like in SF and the town has all the charm and amenities that a young family could want. It begs the question: how much are families willing to sacrifice to continue living in San Francisco? And in the end, what are you actually losing if you leave?