Wonders of What's to Come
But I would never forsake my blog... even for illness.
Did I mention to anyone that we are going to be moving at the end of this school year? Many of the people I know personally are surely either super happy or super sad about this, but the inevitable is nearly upon us and it's time to face the truth. As much as we love South Dakota (adore, actually) it is 1,200 miles from our nearest family and that's hard on Ralexwin. So we will be heading to Southern Utah, to that beautiful city that we met in.
Since we're going to be moving so far I've decided to take this opportunity to downsize our lifestyle. Our current home is 3,000 sq/ft and it's TOO big for me. I can't keep up with it and four kids. I want smaller, I want cozy.
The problem is that I'm overwhelmed. I now understand why my mother doesn't want to move from the house she's been in for 30 years. With a family the size of mine things accumulate rather quickly... how do you go through all of it!?
Yesterday I went through each bedroom and yanked things out of closets and drawers that I haven't seen anyone use in the last 6 months (trying to remember the onset of winter or course). My pile is dismally small still. What I need is a weekend of pure truck packing. I need to get Ralexwin involved and just haul all those things that annoy me out to the truck and down to the consignment store. Except that Ralexwin is so very busy.
Anyone have any suggestions? There are a lot of things I can't get rid of yet... like couches... because we still have a while before we move but I'd like to start the process now.
What do you do?
Comments
It's how I finally figured out to help my kids part with things that were not important.
I'll use the girls crafts as an example. We took all papers out and we sorted them into 3 piles, garbage, keep, maybe. After that I would pick a number that seemed reasonable and tell them that's all they could keep in their room. So they could put some things in a permenant memory box (not stored in their room, and every now and then we go through it to see if we really want everything in it) but altogether they could only keep a specific number of papers in their room. Taking pics of things they want to remember but not necessarily keep works well too.
It really helps them keep their room clean too. They don't feel overwhelmed when they go in and see the mountain of things to go through.
Someone also told me that for grow into clothes she takes an old suitcase filled with the grow into clothes and puts it under each childs bed. She said that she's never needed more than what's in that suitcase and it's in easy reach.
You're smart to get started now. Good luck.
I don't have time or energy to take stuff to DI or consignment.
So I list everything on Craigslist. If I'm selling it, I take clean clear uncluttered pictures of the thing I'm selling and it always get sold for what I price it at.
If I'm giving it away for free, just list it on Craigslist or e-mail all your friends, neighbors, and church people and it will be gone within hours.
My ward has a yahoo group. So we just post on their and it automatically gets emailed to everyone. It's awesome.
You have to learn to let go of your belongings. Can't take it to heaven, so give it away.
Funny you should blog about moving. I was thinking about coming over today to ask if you guys were going back to Utah and if so, my theories on how I'm planning to take this house off your hands...
Good luck on the move. It will be nice to be closer to family but, South Dakota is the greatest place on earth. I really wish we could've stayed...I plan on moving back in a few years if we can.