Boring Moving Stuff
I’m pretty pleased with the results of today’s grocery shopping extravaganza. I spent the amount of money I usually spend on a week of groceries, and I got not only that week’s worth but all of the needed Thanksgiving food and a brand new springform pan so that I can make pumpkin cheesecake for dessert. I waffled over the pan quite a bit, but I really want to make a nice cheesecake and who knows, maybe I’ll use it for other things too. My kids were quite impressed with it, so that’s something, right?
I’m thinking a lot about the things I need to get done before I move (assuming the purchase goes through and I do indeed move). If all goes as planned, I’m going to have a month between when I close and when I have to be out of my current place, but I’d really like to spend that time refinishing the fir floors (seems much smarter to do it before we move in than after), possibly painting (easier to do after we move that refinishing the floors, but still, probably easier to do over all before we move in), and taking the time to move slowly (since there’s no way in hell I’ll be able to afford movers…damnit). So it seems wisest to take care of all kinds of pre-move tasks…pre-move.
Mostly, the tasks are these:
1) Consign clothes. I took care of my boys’ part of this and will take care of my own part on the 5th. I have all the clothes ready to go (except the summer stuff, which will have to wait), now I just have to finish up a couple things (iron a couple items, swap buttons from old to new jacket, etc.), but then I’ll be ready.
2) Clean out all rooms for Goodwill giveaways and to determine what has a place in the new house and what doesn’t. I already have a pile of Goodwill stuff just waiting for donation, but I really need to do a thorough purge. I hate nothing more than moving a bunch of useless crap around, and I will especially hate it when I move into this little house that has no space for any crap, particularly the useless kind.
3) Sell useless furniture. It’s been interesting having a third bedroom that functions as my “office.” I’m decent about making sure it doesn’t turn into the crap collection room, but overall it hasn’t been the best solution. Yes, I can work down here, but my boys want to be with me, so now we are all crammed into this tiny little room and they are messing with everything and I’m mostly just yelling at them. Once we move we won’t have a third bedroom (which is fine), and my work space is going to move to an armoire/wardrobe that will sit in a corner of the living room and remain tightly closed (preferably locked) when I’m not using it. That means I can be in on the action when I need to be, but I can also keep my stuff safe. So bye-bye regular office furniture (and anything else that will be useless in the new place, like counter stools and our art supply dresser and the little table that sits in my boys’ room and does nothing but collect junk, etc.). This will be a hard one for me because I hate dealing with people on craigslist. But I want the money, so I’ll suck it up.
4) Finish this #$%*& continuing ed class that seems like it will never die. I’m supposed to finish this class by December 11 but they had a server outage that threw everything off, which means I’m way behind. It doesn’t help matters that I’m sick and tired of this whole thing and find it incredibly hard to get back into when I’m going to have to spend days reconstructing the work I’d already done. I can ask for an extension that would surely be granted considering the technical difficulties they’ve had, but if I am still working on this when I’m trying to move and shit, I may have to throw myself off of a freeway overpass. I must stop procrastinating and get this done!
And then, of course, there are the actual moving things like packing and cleaning and painting and getting the carpets shampooed (part of my lease agreement) that will have to be done before I go, but those will presumably happen post-move or at least during the moving month.
Today my goals are to see if I have finally resolved all the problems with getting myself set up on the new server for my course and, if so, finish recreating all the work I did (I’m about half way done with this). I’d also like to swap the buttons on my new and old coats and then, if I’m feeling really wild, I’ll start walking through rooms and making lists and piles of what needs to go. I keep thinking I have so much time (and really, I do), but it’s amazing how quickly that time slips away.