I hate cardboard moving boxes! They smell odd, they take up a lot of room, and they mean change even if they don't always mean that there will be a move going on. I am in the middle of the biggest moving project ever. Three houses: move my mom's stuff out of her house, move our junk out of ours, and move it all in to the new house we bought for our growing family. Did I mention I am pregnant? Yup, this is going to be interesting.
Yesterday, we completed the move out phase on my mom's house. It was a bittersweet moment, as my father had only passed away 5 months ago, and lots of memories are attached to that place. We cleaned it, moved boxes out, and with a lot of help got the furniture into a pod. It really was therapeutic because we purged a whole lifetime (and then some) of stuff out of that house. To say that I never thought there was that much stuff is a lie. We all knew that my old man was a packrat and when I got moved out of the house, he decided he had carte blanche to stuff the place to the hilt. He never listened to my Mom's requests to clean up, because "he marched to his own drum, basically". There was some collateral damage, as Pixy decided to color on the newly painted walls for no reason: "They needed a pop of color". Sigh! But, it is all done and the house is ready for new occupants.
I walked through the shell of the place, spraying room spray to get rid of the cardboard smell, and made peace with the house. I remembered reading somewhere that every house is a living thing, and you need to talk to it. I also remembered reading that there are little creatures called house brownies, whose job is to take care of a home for you. Even though we don't reside in Ireland, I didn't want to take any chances and talked to the house, let it know our plans for the future. The Sailor thought it was a good idea, and as he worked, he patted the walls here and there. This was a huge feat because there were a lot of boxes, so he probably did this a few hundred times. All three of us, my mother, the Sailor, and myself, kept saying that we were swimming in our version of cardboard purgatory. It is now done..what do we do with ourselves? It was hard to have our thoughts move on to the other house. We didn't get to relax at all.
No rest for the weary, though. We now have to work on moving this house into the new one. It is going to be yet another monumental task and I am finding that my nesting routine is going into overdrive. I am so completely overwhelmed by it all and the pressure to have it all done, that I can't organize myself to think 'MOVE', when all I think about is 'this is a lot of work'. So, there are over 30 boxes that are still left to be packed up and sealed, with a lot of miscellaneous things to give away or throw out. It is enough to make me scream.
Instead, I decided to start taking it one day at a time. Today, I registered Banshee in her new school, we drove by the new house to make sure the girls saw it, we even had lunch near the house to learn a new route! I checked off a few things on my list and I found I could breathe a little bit better, even if I can't really nest until we get to the new house. Hopefully, this new routine of taking it a couple things at a time, will really help me out to destress. Even though, let's face it, moving three houses and getting two little girls back-to-school, all while pregnant...yeah, it is enough to make anyone's head spin. Here's hoping I handle the rest of this with grace. Ha! From the looks of things, the girls and the wolves are doing the best. The rest of us really could use a vacation!
What have you found has helped you during times of stress? Have you ever had huge changes one after the other?
