A Side Note on Packing, Unpacking, and Auctions

I need to pack up more stuff here at home before I can move anything else over there. Still only have two rooms worth of shelves and closets to fill because the other rooms are still being deep cleaned, and the carpets still aren't ready for furniture to be moved in. (Vacuuming has started, but may be redone several times.) But this is a good time to talk about part of the packing/unpacking problem.

We have a lot of stuff. Random stuff. Small stuff. Stuff we probably don't even need, but I hang onto anyway because I haven't had time (or energy or patience or the right frame of mind) to sort it. When we've moved in the past, it's just stayed in boxes or been piled up somewhere (often on or under chairs and tables). I'm hoping to have a fresh new start in this new place that has a magical number of closets and cabinets.

Moving: Day 2

Today I did some more moving alone. I got a little more done without my small helpers running around entertaining me. But it sure was quiet! (The radio helped that, once I found a good classic rock station on the manual tuner, but I turned it off when Mom and Dad got there, since Mom would maybe not like Foreigner and Led Zeppelin blaring in the kitchen.)

Books are shelved, coloring books are in a cupboard, and board games are beginning to find a good closet to live in. The main level hall closets are getting their shelves back, which were removed for painting. My Grandma actually built in most of these shelves herself. Most of them are really pretty straight. We suspect she eye-balled it, so a few are a bit tilted. But they are all spaced according to her needs at the time, which looks pretty odd right now, on account of me not having the same things in the same places. We've really enjoyed seeing all of Grandma's carpentry. She has never been one to be helpless. If she needed something done, she did it to the best of what she could do. Which generally worked out pretty well. So we'll let two or three crooked shelves slide.

It's begun!

Today we officially started "moving"! Bags of movies have been organized onto shelves, and boxes of books are on the floor waiting to be sorted and shelved. That will have to wait until tomorrow, because the movies took all day. It apparently was a big deal to get every genre grouped correctly. I say "apparently" because I didn't plan for it to take all day, it just did. But my favorite TV series are grouped together, my favorite comfort movies are on two shelves (although I may reorganize them another day), and the ones I never watch/somewhat regret buying are up too high to reach. With the scary movies. Because no child under five needs to check out Scream or Attack of the Giant Leeches, regardless of how tame you think they may be. And how cute Skeet Ulrich is.

How's it going?

Okay, so the house needed a little work before we could move in. It hasn't been lived in for more than a year, Grandma wasn't fully able to care for it for a couple of years before that, and there were just some general issues.

I loved how the kitchen looked, but it was maybe not entirely going to work with little girls running around. The stove top was on a little island in the middle of the kitchen, with the ovens mounted into the wall. Yep, plural. Two ovens. And they were olive green, to match the old fridge, which was taken away several years ago. A sad day, indeed.

In case you were interested........

I don't know how many people know or care, but I wanted to give interested people a chance to follow how our move is going.

Yep! That's what we've been up to for awhile now. About a year ago, Dad and his sisters started talking about what to do with Grandma's house, since she's no longer living there. Grandma and Grandpa Luebbe built the house in the 70s, and the original house that Dad grew up in was moved to Goehner (it was not on the market when we moved to Goehner, but part of me was hoping it would be). I've always loved Grandma and Grandpa's house and I spent a lot of time growing up there.

So when the vote was to sell (after selling everything inside), we had to make some choices and look for some solutions. Dad knew this was important to me and Mom eventually okayed it, and they've helped us find a way to make it work. Hopefully.

Honestly, it's beyond our budget. We will likely go bankrupt in the next year trying to pay for it while trying to sell our current house, which we are still paying off. And my parents are technically buying the home and having us rent-to-own, so we will likely drag them down with us. It's terrifying, stressful, and sometimes I wonder what we're thinking.