We finally closed on the house. What a long process. When we bought our first home I do not remember it taking this long. As I think back I know it did because there were some items that needed to be fixed. But at the time it did not seem a long time because the sellers actually let us move in and pay rent the first couple of months while we waited for the loan papers to finalize.
We were able to sign the closing papers on October 7th but could not get the keys until the next day. We were lucky that the deed was recorded the same day because we had to wait for that to happen to get the keys. If is had not recorded on that Friday we would not been able to get the keys until Tuesday. Since we had not been sure we were getting the keys we had not arranged for movers for the weekend. I had feared that we would not get the keys so did not want to do that until we had them. Since the realtor got the keys to use Saturday morning it was too late to arrange a move that day. But we did personally begin taking some of the mountain of boxes to the new house. I am loving it more every time I walk in.
It is nice to not have so many boxes here but the place is beginning to look a little empty. I have been purging and packing for two months but there is still so much to do. I have emptied half of the kitchen and that is all moved and put away. I have very little room left in the new kitchen it is so much smaller. I am having to make some decisions on what to get rid of next. I will also be buying a piece of furniture for the dining room that can hold some of my items. I am thinking a buffet, we will see what I find.
My husband was dragging is feet about packing up and moving but he has now engaged. This last week I worked crazy hours at work because I worked a code deploy in the middle of the night on Tuesday. I had to do the site validation when the deploy ended. Since I had worked overnight I had Wednesday off. Since I knew that I would only sleep a few hours I had arranged for the locksmith to come by and change the locks that afternoon and the internet and cable to be installed and had the washer and dryer delivered. It happened all at the same time.
We had decided that moving our current washer and dryer out of the basement was not going to happen. We will leave them. They might last another couple of years if they don't get moved but a move might have killed the washer. Anyway, since we installed the cable we had to move the TV over there. That is motivating my darling husband to move out of here. Last night he was not sure what to do without a TV. I suggested packing up his study. My son is calling my behavior passive-aggressive, I am calling it smart.
After I got the TV over there my husband actually talked about when we can move the beds. We would do it this weekend but the Pacific Northwest is being hit by an atmospheric river this weekend and high winds. Not a good time to be hauling furniture or driving a truck across an exposed bridge. We will not be able to move this weekend. I am not afraid of a little rain but they are saying that we will get almost six inches this weekend with sustained winds of about 35 miles per hour and gust up to 50 to 70 mph. For around here that is not a little rain. We normally get about 48 inches a year but we get it a quarter inch at a time, from October to June. So we are used to dark and wet days just not copious amounts of rain over one weekend. Oh well, we are going to take this one day at a time. I just know that I can't retire until this house is sold and this house is not ready for showing yet.
What I really want to do is get my sewing room unpacked and sew something. I have not sat down and sewn in two months. Once we made the decision to move I was in packing mode I would purge and pack every evening and every weekend. I am amazed at how much stuff we had in this house. But 43 years in the same place with a lot of space for storage made it so I could 'hide' stuff in the basement and not worry about getting rid of anything. I had trouble parting with fabric and sewing supplies but I did get rid of possible half of my library. I thing that was over 1000 books. Some we sold but most were donated. I got rid of four truck loads of stuff from the basement that we no longer needed. I stuffed the trash can and a neighbors trash can every other week for pick up. I filled the recycling bins every week for the last couple of months. I have shredded years worth of papers.
For the purged items, I did not have the energy to have a garage sale it all got donated. I had the children come and pick up their remaining stuff and also gave them anything that they wanted from the basement. If it had been down there I was not going to miss it. I am sure as it is I have still packed to much stuff and I will have to make decisions about it later. I actually am still purging as I still pack up. But I was running out of staging room and could not pack everything because we are still living here. I so wish we could have just hired someone to come in and pack us up and move us but since I knew not everything would fit in the smaller house I had to make decisions. This has been very hard to do but very necessary. My children will appreciate the fact that I did it. They all think moving was a good idea for us. They did not want to deal with the mountains of stuff but I appreciate that they come and helped me during the last couple of months. My oldest daughter was here almost every weekend with the other two coming in for several weekends to help. They have all made trips to donation sites for me several times. My son and his wife came one week day with their SUV and packed up all the old paint cans and took them to Metro for disposal. They filled the back of their vehicle. Getting rid of the hazardous material was the hardest thing to do because of scheduling. They are open when I work. And you can't put it at the street for pick up.
I would post pictures but I have already packed all my cables for the camera. Although the house is such a mess I would hate for anyone to see it. With all I have been doing cleaning has not been high on the list and I have sure found a lot of dust.
We are hoping for drier weather next week and that we will be able to arrange to have our furniture moved at that time. Until then we will be living between two houses. I have started to unpack and put items away at the new house and will put up curtain rods so I can hang curtains in the bedrooms at least.
This post is getting overly long and wordy but this is the update for now. I hope that next time I can post pictures of my new sewing space.
