Project Reverb Prompt: Home: Tell us about what home meant to you this year. Are you a homebody? Did you do a renovation? Move? Redecorate?
We have taken down many of our paintings, our sculptures. Much of the personality in our home is being removed day by day.
We are painting and cleaning and working hard to have the house ready in a couple of months to put on the market. We’ve done so many good things to the house and we’re going to go ahead with some of the stuff we had planned and at least have a few months to enjoy the improvements. We have loved our big red house. We hope a family with a bunch of kids will find it next.
It has been such a great Halloween house.
We bought the house thinking we would have more than our one wonderful child. That was not to be. We will find a smaller home when we move. We’ll rent for a year first, or that is the plan. And when we do, the only room and decor we’ll be unpacking is the kidlet’s. I don’t plan to unpack much until we have bought our next place. So for a year at least, or longer I’m going for minimalism.
Or that’s the plan. We’ve divided everything into coming with us or staying in storage here for a year. Then after a year ish , we’ll get on a plane and get everything loaded to come back. And visit everyone we miss and love here.
Or that’s the plan.
So home has to come with us. It is in our hearts and in our cats. Wherever J and E are, where ever the furry folk are–there is home. The rest is just possessions and furniture. I won’t see my books for nearly two years but I can still read. i won’t see my mementos and cool decorations for nearly two years but that just means I need to live in now . It is good to see what we really need and what is extra. It’s been good to clean through everything.
It’s sad, but it is also just a bit exciting.
I’m a big fan of PODS. We used this storage method when we sold our Alexandria house and lived in a rental apt. while our Delaware house was being built. The PODS (three or maybe four, can’t remember now) were packed by us, locked by us, then stored and delivered to us when we were ready to unpack them. It saved packing a storage unit only to have to later pack a moving van. Plus, we could pack as we went. We’d have a pod delivered to our house, pack it, then have the next one delivered. It suited the months-long process very well and might work in your circumstances. You could pack one pod with stuff you know you’ll need to have delivered immediately to your new locale, and pack another with stuff that would be nice to have it the rental would accommodate, and the rest (stuff you can live without until you buy) in another.
We looked into pods, but it was going to be much more expensive…I think storage around here is cheap. We’re going to do something like that though maybe with the ‘stuff to come later.” When we come back after getting settled it might make sense to pod that stuff up and just have it get here. There won’t be *that* much breakable. Did you do pods for things like TVs and furniture too?
One small moving van, three pods. The only casualty from the pods was an IKEA cabinet that I should have removed the legs from before loading it. Other than that, everything arrived. It was nice not having to pack/move everything out of the house we were selling at one time. We packed one pod before it went on the market and filed the second one after it sold (with the stuff we would not need at the rental apartment). It was also nice not to have to have everything unloaded into the new house at one time. The pods lived out on the driveway for about a week while we slowly figured out where we wanted stuff.