We Are Moved

I didn't intend to go radio silent for more than a month, but we basically moved into the house over a period of more than a month and it has literally consumed every spare minute of our time, and more than a little of my work time. Shall I update you on everything that has been going on?

First, we had installers come and install the first window treatments. We got fancy scalloped shades for the original part of the house.

In the back bedroom, which is now my office, we put in roman shades.

In the blue bedroom, which Noel is using as project room and we are also using as a guest bedroom, we did plain shades, no fancy scallops.

The front bedroom has very basic, off the shelf curtains in a standard size. This is what they looked like partway through installation.

Now check this out: this is what a really good professional installer gives you.

About a week after the window coverings were installed, we had the movers move our heavy/bulky things and a lot of boxes over.

I had this theory about moving. There's an old saying: "three moves is as good as a fire" for getting rid of stuff. I thought we might be able to do it in two. So before our move into the rental place, we got rid of a bunch of stuff. Over the years in the rental we also decluttered heavily. And now the idea was to leave a bunch of stuff behind and get rid of a lot of it.

I could go into more detail about the stuff but basically, over time we have come to realize a couple of things: first, that we weren't getting the things we wanted to do done because we didn't have the room to work on them. Not because our house is small -- it is quite large now -- but because we had other stuff in the way. So the things that were in our way had to go away. And second, we no longer live in a scarcity society. It's not necessary to stock up on things because we might not be able to get them. Just about anything in the world that we want we can get delivered to us within a week. So storing large stockpiles of materials just in case we need them doesn't make sense.

We decided to get rid of a lot of that stuff and make room for ourselves to do and enjoy the things we keep. It's a life-changing perspective on how you live, and I'm feeling pretty good about it, especially as I enjoy open space in places that were always overfull before.

So our lives over the last month plus have looked a lot like this:

And this:

I've been the point person on moving carloads of stuff across town, while Noel has been suffering through endless iterations of putting up shelves. Here he is in the pantry putting up shelf standards, a process that required him to drive to about five different stores looking for the parts we needed.

On the other hand, it was a real relief to clear the stacks of things off the kitchen island and put them on shelves.

One task I have is to get the wood shelves for the spices. To figure out how many we needed I put tape on the floor and laid out all the spices.

In going through the spices there are a bunch there that I pondered just getting rid of; we use a few spices a lot and many less often, but for some reason we have about eight chili spice mixes which is nothing like how often we make chili.

Some other stuff:

Noel installed our new doorbell button which looks really fancy, and put the doorbell chime back up, as well.

(It is still the case that people knock on the door and I can't hear them. I don't know why nobody even tries the doorbell.)

We had a locksmith come and rekey all our multitudes of random door locks to matching keys, and he also installed our reproduction doorknob. Oh boy does this look good. I knew it would look good but it looks even better than I expected it to. And it feels solid, too.

We are finally able to use the antique secretary I bought a couple years ago. It fits perfectly in the niche beside the old front fireplace. This is our place for processing the mail and doing bill paying. I need to get a chair for it.

And it's been particularly great to eat actual meals at our dining room table, even though right now it is a bit of an art-mounting factory rather than a dining room table as I go through all the art and get proper mounts on everything.

So that's where we are now. The house is great. We are loving living here. Bunny is happy with the elevator that allows her to follow us around despite the cancer limiting her mobility.

More later.

posted by ayse on 11/06/19