Friday, May 22, 2009

Packing it in...

I am happy, no, ecstatic to say that after nearly four years of living in a 900 sq. ft. apartment, we are buying a house! I think it's safe to say that in the current market it shouldn't be a problem to find an available property, so even though we don't have a specific place to go and we don't really know when we'll be moving there, I'm going to start packing NOW.

I've had a few bad moves in my living-away-from-my-parents'-house history, but none so bad as our last one. I'll spare you the details of a pretty long story, but the gist is that we thought we wanted to move, we sold our house, we changed our minds, we still had to move, and we didn't really have anywhere to go. That was fun enough, but then after we secured our apartment (where we live now) my upper back muscles started hurting so much that I couldn't even turn my head, and my chiropractor forbade me to do any lifting. So, in the weeks prior to our move, I couldn't do any work and my husband was away during the day at his summer job, so you can probably imagine how organized a move that was. It involved tossing "stuff" into garbage bags at the end because we had run out of boxes, and those bags were immediately thrown onto the truck of a friend who was helping us. He was heard later saying, "Never ask me to help you guys move again." It was horrid, and I assure you, unpacking was no fun, either.

But that is in the past, and since we have time to do things better this time, I'm starting now. My first stop for advice for anything is the FlyLady, and on her site she has an entire section devoted to moving tips. I printed that article, and I gathered all of the Sharpie markers I could find to make a color-coded chart of the rooms we will be moving. I plan to color-code the boxes so that finding what-goes-where is not as difficult once we get there. I am also going to be brutal with decluttering, and if we don't love it and use it, it's not going with us. (Local freecyclers, stay tuned--your ship may be about to come in!)


So, check back to see what's working and what isn't, and if you have any tips for me, I would love to hear them!

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