I don’t know if you’ve ever done a big move, but we’re in the progress of doing our biggest move to date. The complicated part is that we’re moving in the middle of the worst part of the winter season, during school (homeschooling), and our current house1 has a lot of storage space in both the attic and the basement. Oh, and we’re moving to a split-level.
So, for weeks now my wife has been packing and preparing: Labeling boxes, giving away baby clothes, and today I took a load of stuff over to the local Salvation Army/Goodwill.
What’s neat is that this exercise is helping us purge—I’m really bad at that. It’s teaching us the value of things, and it’s also showing us how much we have and take for granted.
However, the other nice thing about a move is a fresh start—a chance to get a new room, a new space, and some new things. The kids are liking it that we’re actually going to take the time to paint and put borders up especially for their bedrooms. The oldest two are still sleeping in a room that’s yellow—it was the nursery.
One thing that my wife would like to get would be one of those grandfather clocks that chime on the hour. Which is interesting, because for the past few weeks at my new job there was a clock that chimed outside my building on the hour.
Personally, I can go either way—as long as it doesn’t chime at night and keep me awake, I’d be fine with it.
My parents actually have two grandfather clocks that chime at different times. If you ask them, it’s intentional because they both have different pitches and would sound terrible if they both played at the same time!
In any case, a grandfather clock is a neat way to keep time, and I’d think it’d be neat in homeschooling so the kids would know that an hour came. What about you? Do you have a grandfather clock?
- Not pictured. [↩]
In my experience there’s nothing like moving to help you get rid of your old junk. It can be really refreshing to watch the clutter level go down. Of course, now that I’ve had seven apartments in the last eight years, I’m really feeling like some permanence would also be nice.
Posted by Jake | January 11, 2009, 4:06 pmThe house in the picture is definitely awesome. If that’s your new house, then its well worth the trouble. Even if its not, a new house is still good. A bit of change every now and then is good for giving you a new perspective.
Posted by Ling | January 13, 2009, 9:37 amJake, definitely.
Ling, not my new house, just a photo, but a change is nice like you say.
Posted by MInTheGap | January 13, 2009, 10:21 amWe moved about 5 months ago and we got rid of so much stuff!!! It was a very difficult and time consuming process, but it’s great to be free of the clutter. Now I’m hoping and praying that my house sells so that I’m not paying rent and a mortgage!
Karens last blog post..Fun with Noggin and Nick Jr.
Posted by Karen | January 18, 2009, 11:17 pmI hear you, Karen. A lot of people thought we were crazy for getting a house before selling our existing one. To me, I just didn’t want to move twice. We’ll see if we were crazy or clever by how long it takes to sell our current house.
As for the clutter level, it seems a lot of it is coming with us. We gave a bunch away to charity, but there are some things that will be much better suited to a garage sale than the trash…
Posted by MInTheGap | January 23, 2009, 10:41 am