We've Moved!

There is a lot involved with moving your family of four into a considerably smaller house.  Obviously there is the “stuff” that needs to be gone through, packed, sold, whatever.  Our family went through EVERY ITEM WE OWN and easily got rid of 75% of it in some way or another.  Our stuff was weighing us down and really I didn’t want to move anything that I didn’t need.  After the move I have noticed two things.  1) No one has missed any single item that we have purged, and 2) We can stand to lose another 30% of what we have moved.  I still have boxes of “décor” that I haven’t unpacked yet.  I have no idea really what is in these boxes.  Well, I kind of do because I labeled them BUT I would miss a thing in them I don’t think.  I am going to wait and unpack them but I bet by the end of summer when the real house renovations begin I will be tired of moving those unpacked boxes around once and for all.

Speaking of my packing method I must warn you.  No matter how organized and well equipped you are with lists, colored packing tape and organizational spreadsheets/notebooks – the packing will at some point get out of control and shit will just be tossed directly from a drawer into whatever moving box is nearest and opened.  Note: This is only true if you are not using movers.  If you are then I have no idea what kind of heaven you are living in and I would rather not hear about it. 

Something I wasn’t really expecting to have to deal with when moving to a smaller house was explaining to my kids that we are neither poor nor are we getting a divorce.  Apparently the dissolution of my always-solid marriage of nearly 15 years is easier to grasp to some (most?) people than the reality of us just taking a (big) step towards financial freedom and less space to be in charge of on this Earth.

The Dream (as I call it) won’t always hold up.  The dream of moving my simple family from a rather complicated life of large spaces, bills and responsibilities into a smaller, uncomplicated house with less space, less stuff and more time to be who we want to be as a family isn’t exactly a fool proof plan.  It is what it is.  A dream.  A vision to work towards.   There was no poorly drained and over grown backyard in my version of The Dream.  In my Dream kitchen, the hot water and cold water than ran from the sink was not backwards.  And there most certainly wasn’t a pile of large furniture garbage left outside the garage in the driveway of my Dream house from the previous owner because she was lying or lazy (or both) and never called to have them collected like she claimed.

The Dream is ever evolving.  We have definitely grown as a family in more ways over the past month since we have moved that I could have imagined.  I kind of feel like we have taken a step back to who we used to be when we first got married in our first (small) house.  The excitement of making our space fit who we are is still there.  There were many bumps during the move, some were expected and others not so much (i.e. our driveway garbage dump site).  Thankfully not one bump has been anything more than that.  Our kitchen now has hot water coming out the hot side and cold on the cold – you know silly things like that.  I am sure there are going to be more things that we encounter as we tackle the remodel of each room but we are handy and we will figure it all out I am sure.  Pinterest is mu new best friend.  That was most definitely NOT around during the time that we had our very first and second homes.  I do fee l like The Dream is still kicking for us but I am just not quite sure what it will look like when we are done.