Our Pleasant Little Palace

We Moved!

It's crazy! We're crazy, I sometimes think. And then I realize we're right on schedule in our lives, and craziness melts into secure sensibility. I know that doesn't sound logical until I explain it this way: We're racing headlong toward retirement and hoping to have rental property bringing in an income before our final paycheck is deposited. This condo is just one step toward our goal of independence.

Now, I'll share a little bit of the nitty-gritty of our move. I'll skip the packing process, the last long-haul cleaning session, the emotional detachment pains, and the final farewells, and only focus on the chaos of unpacking...

Above: It's Day 7 and I'm standing at my bedroom door surveying the living space beyond. Look! My new tires arrived at 8:30 this morning. Awesome! There were only three possible parking spots for them: On the dining room table, on a sofa, or right in the front entry with everything else in transition. It was a no-brainer.

Side note: A couple of mornings ago I exited my new master bedroom and smiled at this scene, except it was more cluttered and the walkway was much tighter. I’d just entered an organizer’s paradise. I could sort and stash and clean until perfectly contented. Being an organizing/cleaning machine, it was pretty thrilling! Um, I'm getting over the thrill at a very fast rate, but I'm also enjoying the accomplishment, so maybe I'm not...

Reality announced it takes tons of effort to condense a massive palace into an itty-bitty mouse-sized nest, and that's my task. I thought I was accomplishing it fairly well before the move began, but once boxes started piling up in our new space, and after putting things away for a couple of days, I realized I hadn’t deleted nearly enough stuff from our lives before we started loading trailers. And so the job goes on and on and on…

 

Above: Now I'm standing in the dining area doorway looking toward the front door. Um, I need to find a new landing pad for the toilet plungers. Maybe even get rid of one? The wire rack is holding things that are heading to good will, long and short-term storage, or the trash. The shelf is heading out the front door to live in the little storage closet on the patio.

But success is coming! This is the dining area after 6 days of constant work, and so far it's the area closest to completion. Sorry, but I don’t have a before "disaster zone" photo, so I'll take you on a visual tour: Picture 2 wire shelves against the back wall, both piled to the ceiling with boxes. Every other space in their vicinity was also inundated with boxes; the table, the floor — every inch in every direction. In advance I planned the shelves as a "staging area" to hold things until I assigned them permanent parking spots. It worked great and held the chaos in check.

The last step will be adding wall decor, but that won't happen until the box invasion has been halted and all things cardboard have been banished from the kingdom. I'll plan 2-3 days for moving pictures and decor around. I'll smile, frown, nod approvingly, grimace, scheme, measure, and move things again. Finally satisfied, I'll tap nails into studs and molly bolts into sheetrock and finish the magic.

Other than stuff occupying every corner of our Pleasant Little Palace at the moment and disguising it as a hoarder's haven, and everything painted the same color (Everything! Walls, trim and ceiling), we're doing remarkably well. It feels good to pause, look around and see progress, take a breather, and sit down while not yet exhausted, and blog again!

Bye, for now!