Wednesday, September 26, 2012
My Scary Attic
Oh, my poor little neglected blog. I have a lot on my plate right now, but for some reason when I have a cluttered life my mind goes *poof* blank. I will try to do better over the next few months.
Um, holy crap we're moving. In less than three months.
Johnny came home last night and told me, "the movers will be here around December 7th, take three days to pack, be out by the 11th, are given 10 days to travel, sooooo.... yea.... we are basically praying to the moving gods that we get our stuff before the Christmas holiday". Awesome. Because we all know how incredibly motivated the world is between December 23rd and January 2nd.
Living with our "survival box" for a few weeks over the holidays when it was just Johnny and I? Somewhat uncomfortable, but we would re-frame as "camping adventure for two". Living in those conditions with a 2 and 3 year old? Holymotherinheavensavemenow NOOO!
This will be an interesting Christmas, folks. Please send me some good vibes that things fall into place and I'm not cooking myself a Christmas hot dog on a mini Foreman grill.
Even though I feel like we do a decent job of getting rid of stuff, I am still amazed at how much crap we have. How did we ever get so much crap?! And it honestly makes me wonder what people who never move have lurking in their attics and basements. Clothes from 1989? Wrapping paper from their daughter's school sale in 1993? A car seat that expired in 2001?
Let me share with you what has kept me up at night lately. No judging allowed!
Um, holy crap we're moving. In less than three months.
Johnny came home last night and told me, "the movers will be here around December 7th, take three days to pack, be out by the 11th, are given 10 days to travel, sooooo.... yea.... we are basically praying to the moving gods that we get our stuff before the Christmas holiday". Awesome. Because we all know how incredibly motivated the world is between December 23rd and January 2nd.
Living with our "survival box" for a few weeks over the holidays when it was just Johnny and I? Somewhat uncomfortable, but we would re-frame as "camping adventure for two". Living in those conditions with a 2 and 3 year old? Holymotherinheavensavemenow NOOO!
This will be an interesting Christmas, folks. Please send me some good vibes that things fall into place and I'm not cooking myself a Christmas hot dog on a mini Foreman grill.
Even though I feel like we do a decent job of getting rid of stuff, I am still amazed at how much crap we have. How did we ever get so much crap?! And it honestly makes me wonder what people who never move have lurking in their attics and basements. Clothes from 1989? Wrapping paper from their daughter's school sale in 1993? A car seat that expired in 2001?
Let me share with you what has kept me up at night lately. No judging allowed!
Welcome to my attic!
Maternity clothes, formal dresses ranging from the late 90s to now, wrapping paper, a sewing machine from before I was born, crap, crap, and more CRAP
Maternity clothes, formal dresses ranging from the late 90s to now, wrapping paper, a sewing machine from before I was born, crap, crap, and more CRAP
The truth is, we haven't done the best job of getting rid of stuff on previous moves. When we moved from Norfolk to Maryland it was literally a week after Johnny was flown home from deployment. I was working full time and we just didn't have the time to go through stuff. So we moved it, to a home with much storage space and a huge garage. Out of sight, out of mind.
When we moved from Maryland back to Norfolk, I had just delivered Connor. He was an itsy bitsy baby and the last thing on my mind when I was 9 months pregnant or when I had a brand new baby was paring through Abercrombie jeans circa 1996 and gift bags that I had thriftily saved and hoped to reuse from Christmas 2004.
So here we stand. No excuse of deployment. No excuse of newborn. Just a gigantic walk-up attic full of crap.
The military has a weight allowance for moving, but he is officially being promoted on December 1st which raises our crap allowance to 14,500 pounds. He is "confident" we won't exceed that. But still. Who the heck needs 14,500 pounds of stuff? I'm embarrassed to think we will even come close to that honestly.
So last weekend I spent hours in our spare bedroom going through clothes, organizing, donating, throwing away, and putting together a huge hand-me-down box for my best friend who is due next month. I am bound and determined not to move halfway across the country with a bunch of stuff we will never use and don't need. Sadly, that picture of our attic was taken this morning, so I obviously didn't make much of a dent. But I'll get there.
If you are reading this and have any spectacular moving tips, I'm all ears! I want to use this move as an excuse to lose some weight, get rid of stuff, and start fresh in our new home. In my ideal world, nothing we bring with us should go straight back into the attic for our entire tour. Help!
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Hi, I'm Jill!
Extrovert. Mom of two. Wife of a cute Naval Aviator. Lover of wine. When I'm not chasing my two kids around town you will find me writing, taking too many photos, and researching the ten future areas the Navy could potentially (but probably won't) PCS us. We are fish out of water, landlocked at 7,000 feet. For now.
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10 comments:
Moving tip?
Dump it all. You won't regret it. Much. And you can always buy more.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
start craiglisting NOW. It's a great time of year for yard sales, too. Tell yourself you will go through one box a day, when Connor naps and Kate is at school, or after they have gone to bed. You will get rid of a lot that way. That and Goodwill.
We moved from CA to UT around the same timeframe as you guys. Arrived to our new house on Dec 21 I think. We had some kind local movers that agreed to make a delivery on Dec 24.
good luck! it's always overwhelming, everytime we move, but we always do it...somehow.
Just going through it now! If you don't, you'll just move it to your next place and on and on. Every time we PCS we always say we are going to purge and we never do. Our garage looks the exact same way!
SI SE PUEDE!! you can do it! don't throw things in the trash unless it's completely worthless, you never know what struggling single mom out there is just dying for a cheap old sewing machine. if you really want it gone, keep the price low when you sell it and feel good about giving someone a deal. you'll probably make their day! start small, do a little bit every couple of days, and be objective (not sentimental). that's how i reduced everything i owned into a subaru outback when i drove home from colorado!! :)
LOVE YOU!
Oh my! Moving ... so much fun! (I found your blog through Melanie Hooper and I used to "know" you through TheKnot.com way back when!) Good luck with the cleanout - what worked for us was taking EVERYTHING piece by piece. If we hadn't touched it in a year, it went into the donate pile (or trash if it wasn't fit for donation). It was hard, because I found a lot of stuff I had forgotten we bought ... but we stuck to it. If we hadn't touched it in a year, it was GONE. We got our household goods down to 9,000 lbs (and that's a household with two adults, two kids and a dog that thinks she's a kid)!! Yea! Best of luck, I hope the move goes smoothly, especially given that time of year! (We moved two days after Christmas last year and it was a big rough, but manageable!)
Ugh, I have a very similar attic. But you have a better excuse than me, because two short years ago we moved from HI with a scant and tidy 6000lbs of HHG's than I had lovingly and methodically sorted into a "We dont need a pound more stuff than this". Now I think we are easily into the 12K range and we have so, so, so much work to do before we leave here. Unless..... we just seal up the door to the attic and sell/ rent as is. Good plan.
Christmas at the Q house sounds fun!! And who doesnt love a Christmas hot dog? NEW TRADITION!!! :p
Last month, I was THRILLED to discover that our HHG was only 9,000 pounds. Haha. Isn't that sad?
Karen, Johnny informed me last night that our HHG is actually 17,000 pounds. Awesome :p.
If you haven't used it in a year, get rid of it! Our last PCS consisted of me making so many trips to the Goodwill donation truck that the guy knew me by name. Also, consider moving a way to upgrade. Old curtains, clothes, wall art, etc that I've had for YEARS gets donated and gives me a chance to refresh my decorations.
I am a wife and mother of four: First I agree with the post of if you haven't touch it in a year you obviously don't need it except of course heirlooms. Things in the attic are often best sorted in the attic, once you bring it into the living space it somehow magically moves in:-\. Next there are a couple of sites that might interest you. one Freecycle.org is a site where you can post things you no longer need/want and someone will reply and pick it up free to them and you... Secondly for those items you want to sell you might not know but there are garage/yard sale sites on FaceBook just search your area.Lastly I always give my stuff to the Childrens Cancer Society which is different than the cancer federation and they also pick up. Sorry this is so long and good luck moving!
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