We have officially started packing. We are starting with a huge mess, so trying to pack up a disaster zone is . . . complicated. We have been working with an organizer, Leslie, over the past 2 years, first to help empty out Elliot’s house and combine our houses into my place, and now to pull all of our stuff together here and get it to the new house and put away. The biggest bone of contention in our marriage is cleanliness. Elliot is a collector of junk (although he gets upset when I call his “stuff” junk), and tends not to put things away. I, on the other hand, believe everything should have a place, and most things should be either completely put away every day or two, or at least never exceed a small neatly stacked pile in 1 location of the house. The problem is, since Elliot emptied his house and moved all his stuff into my place, things don’t have a place anymore. We never did manage to put everything away. So, it makes it difficult to ask him to clean up when there is nowhere for it to go. We also had to cancel our cleaning lady, because with stuff all over the place, it was not possible for her to come and clean. Back in May, I sort of gave up the fight – I figured we were moving in a month, so why bother any more, right? Well, 1 month has turned into 6+ months, and let’s just say that my house looks like a tornado swept through here.
Since I am really supposed to be taking it easy (and packing and heavy lifting are things I’m supposed to be avoiding), we enlisted Leslie’s help to get things packed and sorted. Last week, we packed up the linen closets, my knitting/crocheting, my baking stuff, and the bathroom vanities, and we moved all the boxes over to the house and stored them there. Today, we tackled the kitchen and now she is upstairs trying to pack up Elliot’s office.
So, assuming the contractor completes the work he is supposed to complete by Friday, we are all set to move in on Sunday. We have too much stuff (and I’m too afraid of creating another messy situation like we did when Elliot moved his stuff here) to move everything at once. Instead, we decided to move in shifts. We are only moving what is necessary for us to start living in the house. We are going to move our kitchen stuff, clothing, linen closets, and vanities. We will be taking the bedroom set and any other big furniture that we are certain will fit in the house. For now, we are leaving behind a few decorative tables (we aren’t sure where/if they will fit) and some file cabinets, and a tv armoire, and my office stuff. We are leaving all of the artwork/personal items behind for now, too. We will slowly move those over when we know where they are going. We also need to deal with our storage unit, but that is definitely a challenge for another day.
I can’t believe it looks like we are finally moving! I’m so ready to be moved into Elliot’s house already! I have an appointment with a place that does blinds tomorrow (hopefully we can have blinds put in soon) and we have a green cleaning service coming on Friday. Elliot is trying to arrange our phone/internet, and I guess we’ll figure out the rest as we go. We are definitely going to need to buy more furniture items, but I just am not sure exactly what yet. Our living room couch will arrive on Tuesday, and we are still waiting for the basement couch and the dining room table top, both of which should arrive by mid-November. We still need to buy some area rugs for the living room, dining room and master bedroom, but we think we might have found what we need. That puts us in great shape for the baby’s arrival!