Five Paragraph Backstory

Like many people, my friend Todd was surprised to hear that we were planning to move, and he wanted to know when I was going to email him with more information.  Other friends have also asked for the "backstory," so here I offer the five paragraph essay* that I wrote to Todd, as an explanation:

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While we have enjoyed living in this house, and especially enjoyed the
quiet location in front of a cemetery, it is time for us to move out.
This house has several issues that are becoming serious problems; our
children need separate rooms, I hate the kitchen, and we are just
outgrowing it.  Allow me to explain.

One of the major problems with this house is that our kids are still
sharing a room.  They are a 14 year old boy and a 10 year old girl.
While it doesn't bother them, it's past time to separate them.  It
would be possible to move Alex into the downstairs room I use as my
office, but then I don't have any space for myself (which I do need)
and I also don't have any space for the vast amount of crap we store
in that space.

Another problem with this house is that I hate the kitchen.  It isn't
actually terrible (despite apparently being scientifically designed to
be difficult to work in) until someone else is in the kitchen with me.
 I get really claustrophobic and annoyed in it if there is anyone else
in it, and I actually fear I will hurt someone at some point if I have
to keep working in there.  It is especially bad if Austin or Julia
comes up and wants to cuddle with me in the kitchen.  I can't stand
it.  I've never been claustrophobic in my life but this kitchen makes
me feel panicky and bitchy.  (I mean I always feel bitchy but the
panic part really adds something!)

A more general reason is this: we are outgrowing this house.  It's a
nice house but we have a lot of interests and *things* that go with
those interests.  We are running out of places to put bookshelves.  I
need more space for yarn.  I can't acquire any more kitchen
implements, regardless of how useful they might be.  It's just not
enough space for all of our stuff - despite my fixation with
decluttering and tossing things out or giving them away.  It's time to
go.

We can't stay in this house forever and it is now time to move on.
The kids need separate rooms, I can't stand this kitchen, and we just
have too much stuff at this point in time.  The efforts to sell this
house continue and hopefully we will be moving early in 2013.

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*The five paragraph essay thing is an inside joke with those of us who went through the Honors Social Studies program in Hastings in the late 1980s (as Todd and I both did, albeit in different years).  We had an American history teacher named Mr. Hartman who had us write five paragraph essays in this exact form every Friday, all year.  It eventually became clear to me that Mr. Hartman even conducted his class in five paragraph essay form; we always did three things and he always told us what we were going to do (down to the minute) at the beginning of class and talked about what we had done as we all filed out together to go to Mr. Schultz's Honors English class. 

So yeah, I can still crank one of those essays out in about twenty minutes.  Scary.

I feel compelled to point out that the kitchen isn't really all that bad and it's better than a lot of other kitchens that are out there.  It's just not possible to remodel it easily.  I never thought I would be so bothered by only having one exit out of a room into the rest of the house but it makes me feel trapped and panicky.  Hopefully it will be the perfect kitchen for someone else.