On Packing and Preparing

We are 11 days out from being finished with House 6. We hit the tipping point this weekend where our décor went from "mostly intact" to "yea, they're moving," which means its now totally normal to have lawn bags sitting on the counter, a bucket with a plunger and rubber gloves in the middle of the floor, and mouthwash sitting on the staircase. All of the beds except the one we sleep on have been taken apart and the bedding packed. We took a load of stuff to the storage unit today and rearranged everything, and, because we are now Tetris wizards, we got a bunch more in there with more room for additional things.


Since we're going to have a gap period in between places to live (more on that in a future post), we are making an intentional effort to eat down all food in the fridge and freezer. Unfortunately, that also means that when our friends MaryJane and Chris came over for dinner on Saturday night and brought cornbread mix, we couldn't make it because we only had one egg left and no more butter. Tonight I had salad and leftover pasta from last night's dinner, along with a half a jar of pickled green tomatoes. Eric had leftover pot roast. I'm a couple days away from starting to eat condiment sandwiches. I'm also scheming how to cook up something using the rest of the bottles of soy sauce, Worchester, and teriyaki marinade.

The box label is starting to get a little messy...

This will be the 8th move we've made since 2012, when we made our cross-country journey. I've started replacing boxes, but most of them have seen multiple moves at this point. I'm learning that effective moving requires effective labeling of boxes. Specific labeling, wherein the word "miscellaneous" should never, EVER be written. Those boxes are death to caretaking, because they require opening to learn that "miscellaneous" just meant extra plastic cups, and not, say, the silverware you were looking for. Never again shall I label anything with the "M" word.

I'm also learning that you can't pack everything at one time. From the time you learn you need to move out, there is only so much you can pack until the last couple days, because you need things like your toothbrush, plates, clothing, and most importantly, the coffee maker. However, what you can do is further shrink your footprint in the house by starting to close out rooms. This involves packing and/or moving out everything from that room, cleaning it, posting a sign that says it is clean and closed, and kissing that space goodbye, never to be entered again. Seriously, signs are sanity savers. Before I started labeling empty rooms, drawers, cupboards and closets, I would go in and out approximately 1,000 times, and open a drawer approximately 1 million times to see if I had anything in there to pack up.  So far in this ginormous place, I have three bedrooms totally closed down, as well as the sitting room for the master bedroom (because sitting rooms are still a thing and require furniture for staging them properly. Hence why we couldn't sell off everything last time.) Oh, and I've closed out three bathrooms, all three of which I'm pretty sure I never used, because it takes more than 6 weeks to effectively use every room in a house, including 5 bathrooms. (PS, The desk, the large wooden end/office table, and the carved wood chair are still for sale if you know anyone.)

We also are in packing up mindset... tonight Eric said, "ok, I'm going upstairs to pack really quick." I replied, "What are you packing up?" He looked at me and said, "No, for the night, like some clothes and stuff in case I'm gone overnight chasing."

"Oh.," I said. "People do that? Like pack up just some of their stuff?"

Eric said I was funny, but honestly, he really did have to explain...