phase one

Alex was home for approximately 36 hours from Sunday afternoon to early this morning, and I informed him we were entering "Phase One" of my headache-free packing strategy. Phase One involves cleaning and decluttering. This is a necessary step in the moving process because you don't want to move things that you don't want/need/use anymore. So if something has been sitting in a box since we moved to Austin five years ago, and you are not able to identify what is in the box and/or you aren't missing anything essential from you life, whatever is in that box probably--which actually means definitely--has to go. Also included in the "must go" category are rollerblades (yes, rollerblades) you haven't worn in 11 years along with mold-covered sandals you found in the back of your closet. While you're at it, this is a great time to go through that closet and discover moths have destroyed three dresses, two of your favorite sweaters and a poncho. Thanks, moths, you just lightened my load.

Phase One also involves taking down all pictures/art from the walls. While you're at it (if you're me), you might as well go ahead and order prints that you would like to hang in the new place to update the gallery wall during this burst of energy. Before you pack up the gallery wall, swap out the old pictures for the new ones, and you'll be psyched to have something new as you inevitably unpack a box or two that leaves you thinking why did we keep this? at the new place. (The plan is not fool-proof.) During Phase One you can also order draperies for the new living room and sneak the shipping box in with your packing boxes. No one will ever be the wiser. What's one more box?

Phase One is nice. It's not chaotic. It makes you think you're ahead of the game and super-organized. Your boxes and things look neat and tidy stacked against the fireplace and you're able to convince yourself this move will be a cinch. I love Phase One.

pack it up, pack it in

We're leaving Austin for five weeks in four days. (Catcher gives me the countdown every morning.) I've always been a last-minute packer myself; I feel that "packing under pressure," as I call it, leads to executive decision-making. There's no time for thinking about whether or not you're going to need this dress or that pair of shoes--you just pack and pray.

Scout, on the other hand, must be one of those who prepares days and days ahead of time. Yesterday, while she was supposed to be taking a nap, I heard her shuffling around in her room for an hour. When she finally opened the door to let herself out, I walked in to discover Scout had been packing herself for Milwaukee. There is nothing staged in this photo--it is exactly how I saw it when I walked in and quickly snapped a shot with my iPhone. I'm definitely enlisting her help on Monday when I get down to some serious packing.

living like we don't

I'm usually--and by usually, I mean 98% of the time--a pretty clean and organized person. I make the bed every--and by every, I mean every--morning and try to teach the kids not to romp around on the furniture. This week, however, all bets are off. Here's a look at our day:

Scout picked out mis-matched shoes to wear this morning. I wasn't about to fight that battle; actually, I was impressed that she chose one right shoe and one left shoe.

My bed: unmade.

Catcher and Scout spent a good 20 minutes entertaining themselves on--and under--the coffee table. It was 106 degrees today. We managed to make it to the playground this morning (when it was only 95) but this afternoon I didn't care what they did inside as long as I didn't have to lug anyone to and from the parking garage.

Catcher's bed: also unmade. Note: those books on the shelf at the end of his bed are usually stacked neatly and organized by theme/author.

Although you can't tell from this picture, Tillie spent the afternoon pant-less. She had a major explosion, so I let her hang out in just a shirt and diaper for the remainder of the day. I think she liked it. 

packing update

It's going...

but maybe I should take back what I said previously about loving to pack. It somehow escaped me that I do not like packing up the kitchen. Perhaps that's because creativity eludes me there. Ironically, though, about 60% of our belongings are kitchen-related. The other 40% is books (more or less). I'm rambling. But I think that's because I don't want to finish up my kitchen project from this afternoon. Every time I come across a melon baller or mustard spoon I have to wonder if I'm ever going to use these things. And do they belong in the same drawer...with the egg separator? I don't know.

things you find

The fun thing about packing is that no matter how often you move and go through all your old things, you always find something new (and by new, I mean old) and interesting that you forgot you had. Scout stumbled upon this pair of Alex's socks and kept herself entertained for a good half-hour this afternoon.

She also found his old ski goggles (pictured on her head, above) that Catcher wrestled away from her and went to bed wearing. Which reminds me, maybe I should sneak into his bedroom and take them off.

not a box

This is what it looks like when you're trying to pack-up your two-bedroom apartment with two of your three kids finding new and interesting things to do with the boxes you need for packing:

 

This is the baby who remained relatively chill--other than wriggling her way off the play mat--during the whole affair:

pack and go

Let's be honest: I like to move. I even like the things about moving that everyone else hates--like packing and unpacking. For me packing is a chance to get rid of things that you weren't quite ready to part with on your last move, but now you realize it's time to say goodbye (exhibit A [above]: my first bag for Goodwill). On the other side, unpacking is a chance to re-imagine and re-organize my life. What's not to love?

This morning we signed the lease documents on our new place, and this afternoon I was begging Alex to round up some boxes for me before he departed for Arizona. The funny thing is that our last two moves have been major moves--New York to Charlotte, Charlotte to Austin--so a small part of me feels I have to do all these things in South Austin (like eat at Home Slice one more time or stock up on coffee from Ruta Maya) before heading to the Northeast side of town. The distance from here to there is about six miles, and they sell Ruta Maya coffee at the H.E.B.

POD-ing

Not one to be left out of the action, Catcher eagerly pitched in to load the POD this weekend. He found a dolly that wasn't being used, loaded up his boxes of toys, and dragged them to the POD. He couldn't have been happier, and the heat index of 107 didn't seem to bother him.

In the meantime, my stepdad and Alex were putting their best Tetris skills to the test to create the perfect configuration of boxes inside the POD. It's really amazing how much stuff can fit into one of those things, and I'm thinking that their perfect packing will make for easy unloading once we get to Austin. Check back with me in a week and see if I still feel the same way...

the sorting room

We're approaching ten days until our 19-hour journey to Austin, and it's time to get serious. Last night Alex began Adventures in the Attic. Among other things, he discovered we still have those IKEA shelves that I made him buy and hang in our bedroom only to have him take them down six months later when I freaked out one night thinking they were going to crash down on my head. He also found a box of hand-me-down clothes that we never opened and a bunch of coozies that will make someone's day for 10 cents at the yard sale. Speaking of the yard sale, that brings me to the current state of our dining room. Check it out:

I'm calling it the sorting room right now. Although nothing is actually sorted, per se, I have big plans to begin "TX" and "NC" piles. The Texas group will be transferred into our POD this weekend; the North Carolina stack will end up in our front yard on Saturday morning. I guess it's a good thing the kids wake us up at 5:30am on the weekends because we'll need the extra time to haul all this crap out of the house. Too bad Starbucks isn't open that early. We don't have a functioning coffee pot at our house, but we did find a semi-working toaster oven in the attic. I'll sell it to you for 5 bucks.

suitcase living

When Alex and I first moved into this house we lived out of a suitcase for four months. Literally. We had a giant suitcase on the floor of our bedroom where we kept all our clothes that wouldn't fit into our tiny closets. At the time, I didn't think much of reaching down to the floor every morning in search of a clean tee shirt, but maybe that's because I was relieved not to be living in a hotel anymore. This past Sunday, a feeling of nostalgia washed over me as I watched Alex haul the dresser out of our bedroom to deliver it to a girl who had purchased it from Craigslist. Back to the floor. This time it's Scout and me who've been relegated to suitcase living (Alex and Catcher will be next, however, if we manage to sell our other dresser). 

Just like six years ago, I have to admit that I don't mind the whole suitcase-on-the-floor-of-our-bedroom thing. Moving into it forced me to pack up a bunch of clothes I won't need for the next two weeks, and I feel like I accomplished something this weekend. I just hope these walk-in closets I'm dreaming about in Austin are as big as they appear in their pictures, or else it's more suitcase living for us...

first one to go

Happy 4th of July! I celebrated my independence today by working while Alex celebrated his independence by taking care of the kids (yikes!). He also managed to sell our china-buffet-hutch, so cheers to the beginnings of our moving slush fund (and cheers to getting rid of the first piece of furniture neither one of us was excited about moving). Although I loved our china-buffet-hutch when I found it at the Habitat for Humanity Restore a few years ago, I never had the time to refinish it as I had planned, and the drawers didn't really work once you weighed them down with your belongings. Plus, I'm confident I'll be able to find a suitable replacement in Austin when and if we ever buy another home.

Here's one last look at our mid-century find of the century:

The current state of our dining room (below). Please excuse the mess. If you didn't believe me before, you can see I was serious when I said I've given up on having our house "show ready." The table is up for grabs, too, so I hope it goes next and we can turn our dining room into the packing room.

let the packing begin

With one month to go until D-Day (Departure Day) last night I decided it was time to start packing. So I started with one of the least-used items in our household--the china cabinet. I can count on my hands the number of times we've used our china since we've been married. Actually, I can count on one finger the number of times we've used our china: we used it on Christmas Eve last year. Anyway, I figured packing it up would make me feel as if I had accomplished something without interfering with my everyday routine. While I wrapped our vintage jewel Lenox in the Sunday New York Times, Alex ventured into the "media cabinet" (i.e. console bureau, that's an inside joke) where he was in charge of our DVD collection.

DVDs (on the left, below) and a collection of Carl Sagan VHS tapes from Alex's college days (on the right). He's convinced he can get at least $5 for the them at our yard sale. At least he has the complete set. Do they still make VCRs? Maybe some mystery yard sale shopper has one of those fancy TV/VCR combos, and will think they hit a goldmine when they see this amazing (and I mean that in a cosmic sort of way) collection.

Here's a look at the living room last night in the throws of packing. Funny how two boxes create quite the crowding effect in 847 square feet. I'm not even bothering myself with keeping the house "show ready" anymore. One more night of packing will have us tripping over each other in ways we've never known, and we haven't even started with what's already packed up in the attic. I guess it's time to begin selling off our furniture to make room for all the boxes.

paperwork

During our six and a-half years of marriage, I have never heard Alex utter the following (until last night): "Wow. We have a lot of shit we don't need." Last night was phase one of packing: cleaning out the "filing" cabinet. The picture above was taken in the very preliminary stages. I should have taken another shot for a more accurate representation when the drawer was empty, but I was too bogged down looking over my class schedule from design school in 2003 to think about it. I also found an atlas (pictured below) from the days before GPS (remember those?) when you actually needed to reference a map for an impending journey through six states. We uncovered the deed to our house (we should probably keep that) and a business card from the guy who serviced our HVAC unit two years ago. We kept the important things like passports and birth certificates and social security cards, and everyone has his or her own folder holding such documents. I had to remind Alex that the folder with your name on it is for important things and not important things plus a receipt for granite counter tops and your scuba diving license that expired 17 years ago. It was great to purge, but all I could think about was the attic. If one little drawer in one little cabinet generated so much trash, what in the world do we have in store for us when we brave the contents of the attic? I hope Alex with his "we have a lot of shit we don't need" mentality sticks around a little longer.

End note: the papers (albeit in a nice, organized stack) were still on the living room floor when Catcher woke up this morning, which prompted him to point to the pile and say, "What's going on with this mess?"

everything must go!

Tonight I started thinking about packing. And packing up a U-Haul. And hauling things into that U-Haul. And unloading those things in an Austin location still TBD. And then I decided we need to have some sort of clearance sale before we leave Charlotte. Things I will not be selling include books--they came with us from New York City and they're going with us to Austin--and shoes and clothing. We also won't be selling any TVs, electronics, coffee tables, rocking chairs, cow chairs, ghost chairs, desks, beds or cribs. Oh, and not the sofa and the rug in the living room. Anything not mentioned above, however, may be up for grabs. Wait. I forgot to mention the python side table--not that either. The cheap mirror in my bedroom is definitely going along with the side table that has been sitting in our attic for two years. The bench up there may have a chance, however, since I have a plan for it which includes a Mexican blanket I hope to find in Playa del Carmen when we go there in a few weeks. I also plan to keep the chair that I got from eBay and the other chair I got from eBay (it's in a box in the attic that has never been opened). I'm definitely keeping that little elephant side table guy that I also have big plans for, and hopefully I can actually complete some of these projects I've been planning for over a year.

to do

We're almost (almost) ready to get this house back on the market. But every time I turn around, there seems to be something new we need to do (even though we've been doing this for 18 months now). Below is a list of things to get done before we meet with our new realtor on January 30th. By the way, we were supposed to meet with him this Sunday and we had a shoot scheduled with HGTV. Then the Packers beat the Falcons: end of story.

1. Finishing packing the books on the dining room table and get them up to the attic.

2. Re-caulk the tub in the bathroom.

3. Unpack/hook-up the Sony PlayStation (or take it to the attic).

4. Get rid of the giant box that the new TV came in.

5. Take the old TV up to the attic (and pray that squirrels don't make a nest out of it).

6. Take Catcher's bike up to the attic (he's still too short to ride it!).

I know I'm forgetting 100 things, but I'm kind of bored. I find myself making to-do lists all the time with my new job, so I'm not really in the mood to make another one right now. Later!

when in doubt, de-clutter

This is my dining room table. I'm in the midst of New Year's cleaning/de-cluttering for the next round of showings/getting a head start on the packing process (since I know our house will sell soon). And I'm also a little bored with not having any real projects to do around the house--not counting the lamp incident from the other night. So right now I'm just piling up a bunch of stuff that I will point to when Alex gets home and say "that needs to go to the attic." Actually, I'm kind of surprised that the attic hasn't caved in on us yet. We've slowly been adding to its contents over the past 18 months that we've been trying to sell our house. Some days I'll randomly think of something--like the bench I bought for $20 at the golf store that was going out of business or the chair I bought on eBay and never removed from its packing box--and wonder if the squirrels have gotten to it yet. I won't even let myself think of all the shoes and bags I've relegated to the attic during an insane cleaning spree (or momentary lapse of reason). When the time comes to clean out the attic, it will need a U-Haul of its own. I wonder if the dishes that Alex and I used to eat off of in New York are still up there...