Sticks and Stars

Today I managed to move my little freezer chest and all of its contents to the new house. I banged it around pretty thoroughly but it still seems to be freezing things, so that’s good. It’s hard to move things like that when you don’t have any help. If furniture is bulky but relatively light, my six year old can help me at least a little bit, but mostly it’s all on me.

We also took a trip to IKEA so that I could nab some of the storage stuff I need for my kitchen and I made the mistake of hitting up the as-is section first. Usually hitting up the as-is section is a wise decision because if you are looking to buy an expensive piece of furniture and don’t mind ones that have been mauled by a million families before you, you can often find great deals. However, I was not looking to buy expensive pieces of furniture, mauled or otherwise, and during the walk across the parking lot after dropping my kids off at the kiddie play area I warned myself that I was just setting myself up for disappointment.

Sure enough, I found the desk I was thinking of buying, the one that will perfectly fit my computer and my decor now that my computer needs to live in the living room, and that will allow me to get rid of my file cabinet, store all of my office supplies, and even hold the printer/scanner/copier I’m ambivalent about getting rid of even though I never use it. And, of course, it was 50% off too.

I hemmed and hawed while picking out my kitchen storage and my new storage canisters (since it turns out there are very good reasons that you are supposed to store things like flour in airtight containers and those very good reasons are called weevils and let’s never speak of it again), and after I picked up my boys and we ate lunch at the IKEA restaurant (kids ate free today and mmmm, meatballs!) I finally decided that we’d pay for our stuff, take it out to the car, come back, and if the desk was still there, I’d say to hell with the fact that it probably wouldn’t fit in my car and certainly not along side my children, and buy it.

And of course it was still there, so I did, I bought it, and I even somehow managed to get it to my new house. It’s kind of amazing what you can accomplish when you know you really don’t have any other options. But now I have the desk I wanted! And for half the price I was expecting to pay! And, perhaps best of all, I don’t even have to put it together!!

I did, however, make one very unfortunate discovery today. Somehow I never managed to look inside the fridge at my new place and wow, it was so nasty it actually made me gag. And not only was it nasty, but someone managed to punch holes in the interior, which surely can’t be good for its health on the whole. So now I have to decide whether I grin (and hold my breath and close my eyes) and bear it, or whether I buy a new fridge. I priced them a bit tonight and jeez, fridges are expensive, especially if you want a fancy one. But even if you don’t want a fancy one, they’re still expensive when you weren’t planning on buying one.

I guess this weekend will see us visiting used appliance stores. If I could buy something used and fancy for the price of something new and basic, I’d be pretty happy with that. Otherwise, tomorrow’s the first day we can actually start moving in to our new place! The plan is to take over one current piece of toy storage and all the toys in it, then hang out while I put together our new kitchen storage, then return home and load up all non-essential kitchen items. Maybe I’ll also see if I can get my new desk in place so that I can bring over all my office supply shit.

Oh right, and today’s New Year’s Eve! Happy New Year everybody!!

Today I managed to move yet one more load of crap into the shed/garage at my new place. I thought I didn’t have anything else to store in there but it turns out that I was conveniently forgetting about my absolute lack of storage space in the house. I was meditating on closet organization and realized that the tiny closets in my house are barely going to hold clothes and linens, much less, say, luggage. If I store my vacuum cleaner in my bedroom closet it will take up about half the available space.

So to the garage everything goes, which is fine really because it means I have something with which to fill my time instead of merely fidgeting and whimpering.

I also purchased my new washer and dryer today. I fully intended on going used, but people on craigslist seriously overvalue their used washers and dryers, especially if the set includes a front loading washer. I could get a new set for less than what they were asking so I moved on to used appliance stores. Unfortunately (or fortunately maybe) I was quickly advised (by used appliance store employees) to not purchase a front loading washer used, as the bearings would likely be just about worn out and many used appliance sales folks might not be terribly up front about that. I could purchase a dryer used and that would be a safe bet, but I’d need a matched set if I planned to stack them, and that combo might be hard to find (new washer and used dryer).

So I set off to find the best internet deal on a new set and wound up purchasing this set for just under $900 including tax and delivery. My initial plan (when going used) was to spend $500, and $900 is definitely more, but I am really, really, really unwilling to go without a washer and dryer, so I feel like it’s worth it, and at least it will have a warranty and all that. And later in the day I accidentally and very randomly stumbled across a website informing me that I also qualify for a $100 rebate through my city because the washer is just so darn fancy, so that makes it even a little bit better.

The only other thing I accomplished today was to make all the calls to switch my utilities. It all went smoothly and in the case of my internet service, they even knocked the price down by about $30 a month for no reason that I could discern. I’ll take it. Best to pocket the money now and ask questions later.

The floor people let me know that they will be done tomorrow morning and that I would be safe to start moving in on Friday. I took a peek at the floors when I dropped off tonight’s load of stuff and wow, they really look amazing. I wanted to choose a darkish, cherry color for the floors but the guy in charge informed me that what I really wanted was the natural color of the wood, so I shrugged and said okay and indeed, it was a good choice. They are a rich honey color and every knot and grain irregularity shows up. They really look beautiful.

I still need to get boxes from the liquor store, or somewhere anyway, but my intent for the weekend is to take over either items that can be put away immediately (i.e. kitchen stuff) or whole items (like a bookcase and all the books in it) that can be immediately set in place and written off. This weekend should give me a good indication of what it’s possible to get done before the big moving (and washer/dryer delivery and internet hookup) day on the 16th.

I was somewhat fortuitous in getting called home today to retrieve my sick three year old from preschool as it allowed me to get a lot of stuff done. Really, I didn’t expect to get anything done as I was committed to respecting my little one’s illness, but he was all for visiting our new house, which allowed me to drop off the first load of crap while he contentedly waited in the car. Later in the day, after bouncing off the walls for a while, he was ready for a nap but couldn’t settle, so we went for a drive and he promptly fell asleep, which left me with the perfect opportunity to take a huge carload of stuff to Goodwill. It was truly the perfect opportunity considering that I was giving away a fair number of his toys and I was fully braced to deal with that freak out. But sleeping boy equals freak out avoided!

The final achievement of the day was getting a second load of crap moved over, including all of our Christmas decorations. This was a biggie because we have this huge fake tree that only fits in the car if I can put down part of the backseat and there is pretty much no time that I can put the backseat down because if I’m in my car, my children are generally sitting in the way. I knew I could not pass the opportunity of a half empty car, so voila, all the decorations taken down, packed and moved. My three year old was a bit traumatized when he woke up from his nap to find the tree packed away, and my six year old was also traumatized when he got home from his daycamp, despite my warnings, but really, it’s for the greater good.

Now I’m at somewhat of an impasse. As I mentioned, I only have access to the kitchen, bathroom, utility room and shed/garage until this weekend when the floors are finished…or re-finished…or finished being refinished anyway. Given the small size of the spaces to which I currently have access, I’m very hesitant to move in anything in that doesn’t belong in the room in which I place it. I’ve moved pretty much everything in my current garage and I’ve moved a few small kitchen appliances, but there isn’t much left that I won’t need in the upcoming few weeks. I guess maybe tomorrow’s post-work trip should be to the liquor store for boxes so that I can start boxing while I’m waiting for the floors, and I suppose I can also start taking things off my current walls. If I’m really desperate I guess I could cart over my insanely heavy, rain-sodden container garden pots. They’ll have to go sometime.

Okay, now that my car is full of miscellaneous bunk bed parts, a cooler, too-small children’s ride-on toys and a huge bin containing a good three generations of photos, I think I’m going to amend tomorrow’s carload of moving to instead be tomorrow’s carload of crap to Goodwill. Really, it was hard to move anything because most of it needs to be dumped. You can see by the list of items that did go, that I’m not exactly getting at the high priority items. And even those ride-on toys would be headed to Goodwill were it a bit closer to ride-on season.

Idea: I’ve watched enough HGTV to know that a bin of photos moldering in the garage is a stain on my very soul and I’m greatly looking forward to taking those photos out of the bin and framing them in collections on my walls. Not only do I love the look of eclectic matted and framed photo groupings (similar to this, but photos instead of art), but I especially love the idea of having photos of my family all around me in my new little home. I opened the bin tonight and was surprised to see not only the endless late 70s hairy glory of my older male cousins (the photos I remembered), but also lovely photos of my mom in high school in the 60s (the photos I’d forgotten). My parents’ wedding photo, my dad in the military, my brother and I playing outside in summer — so many nice images.

Today I closed on the new house. It’s really mine now. Or mine and the bank’s anyway, but I don’t believe the bank has plans to move in.

After my real estate agent called to tell me that it was all finished, I felt stressed out and overwhelmed and just the thought of that empty house made it feel like the weight of said house was resting squarely on my shoulders.

But then we stopped by to leave keys for the floor refinishing people who are coming first thing in the morning and I’m glad we did because it was unexpectedly nice to walk through the rooms and realize that this is my house. I’ve been through this before, the purchasing of a home, but all I really remember is my boys’ dad being so negative about the whole thing, being so negative about everything, really, and that so easily rubbing off on me. Buying a house all by myself is quite a different experience, and really quite a nice one.

So the floor refinishers come tomorrow, and that will leave the house out of commission until this weekend at least, but my plan is to load up my car every night (starting tonight) and then drop stuff off after work every day (starting with the storage stuff, since we can access that, floor refinishers or no). I think maybe I already mentioned that, just yesterday even, but I think I will also need to keep writing everything out over and over so that I feel like I’m containing it all in some tidy way and don’t need to go insane instead.

Today I also started poking around craigslist and google maps for, respectively, used washers and dryers and used appliance stores. I want what I currently have now, a washer and dryer that sit on top of each other (although my are not fancy like that photo), NOT to be confused with a stacked washer and dryer. I only have vertical space, but now that I know that the former is possible (previously I only knew of the latter), that’s what I want. None of the appliances in the house are stellarly new, so I expect I may have to replace more than one during my tenure (or buy them outright, as is the case with the washer and dryer) and I want to buy nice ones. They don’t have to be top of the line (and they will likely be used), but if I can scrape up a little extra fanciness, I will happily do so (a front loading washer is just such a bit of fanciness).

Today’s idea: Although I’m having the hard (or soft really — Douglas Fir) wood floors refinished, the kitchen, dining area and bathroom are covered in a blackish linoleum that I am disinclined to fuck with. However, it occurred to me last night that I could just paint it, or paint parts of it (like, say, white checkerboard squares) and that would be a great way to change it up without much expense or potentially disastrous floor tearing out. In general I prefer a pretty modern aesthetic, but I am learning that I also like a little bit of style with curlicues around the edges. And in this house in particular, I am fairly sensitive to the fact that it’s an old house. Black and white checkered floors might be overdone to some extent, but I think they could look quite nice in a little old house…and it would sure beat painting on a penny tile effect (which I also really like — even if it predates my house).

[Really, I cannot tell you how relieved I felt this afternoon when I remembered that I could write out all this nonsense and post it here. Thank you for tolerating it.]

I was thinking of creating a new blog just to track my process of moving into and prettying up my new house (closing tomorrow!) but then I thought maybe I’d just write about it here instead. So consider yourselves warned, I will now be writing way too much about the potentially intensely boring machinations of my decor-frenzied brain…

Idea: Currently my boys have toy storage in the form of two of these stair step cabinets from IKEA and one of these modular cubey units. They work okay except that, particularly with the bins, my kids can’t see the toys so they often don’t play with them, and in the case of all of the storage, there’s too much to see so they are somewhat overwhelmed by choices (and it lives in their closet, so they don’t really see it at all).

In their new room they are going to have less space than they currently have and although I had a plan for getting it to all fit, it occurred to me that I could buy some kind of three cube storage thingy on wheels (essentially one third of the nine cube unit I linked to above), or a bunch of them rather, and then rotate the toys in and out of the closet. Just a few days ago I rearranged my boys’ toys to mask the fact that I got rid of a bunch of them and they were thrilled with the change, seeing all their toys for the first time again. If I stored their toys on wheeled storage units, I could keep some fresh in the room and others waiting in the closet, and then switch them out as interest waned. And if I made sure to only use clear storage bins, they could always see what was within.

I think I’ll still have to keep one of the IKEA storage units, if for no other reason than that they so successfully store our plethora of train tracks (although in the past year I managed to convince my six year old to part with all but the wooden Thomas/Brio/etc. stuff and our massive collection of GeoTrax), but I could tape nice photos of the contents of those bins to the outside…even if the tracks never quite get forgotten like the other toys.

Now that Christmas is more or less over, I’m in full on moving-mode…or stressing-over-moving-mode at least. I set a date of January 16 and although I feel good that something is set, I also feel so overwhelmed by everything that needs to be done that I am pretty much paralyzed. Really, the first thing I need to do today is make a grocery list and get some groceries in the house and finish cleaning up the presents and crap, but those seem so menial in the face of the impending MOVE that I can’t possibly do them. Thus, further paralysis.

My goal for the weekend is to stop worrying about all the money I need to spend in the upcoming weeks/months/years (also paralyzing) and instead get all my usual shit done (laundry, tidying, groceries, etc.) and finish cleaning out my house for garbage and Goodwill. I am almost done with this and I’d love to load up my car and take it all away before I close on Monday.

Monday brings keys to my new place and Tuesday brings the floor refinishing people. My plan is to load up my car every night and bring stuff over to the new place right after work the next day…at least to the extent that I can. Only the kitchen will be accessible for about the first week, but I can fill up the storage shed with all my garage stuff. First I need to figure out a way to lock the shed though, because I don’t believe the door even closes currently.

Aack, and I can’t forget to call about utilities.

I was sick enough to stay home one day this week but since I knew it might be my only child-free chance, I dragged myself out of bed to get my holiday shopping done.

I get so excited when I find really cool gifts for my boys and this year I found one for my three year old. I was so excited about that I had to tell someone, so I told his brother. As it turns out, six year olds? Not so good at keeping secrets.

Oh well. At least I’ve received a great deal of confirmation from my three year old that it was an excellent choice.

I got my hair done today. A long time ago, I posted before and after photos of my hair, and that was actually the last time I got my hair done before today. So I guess I was about due.

I got it cut, then I had the whole thing colored to my natural color in order to get rid of all the grown out faded reddish blond from last time, and then I got highlights. The highlights are a bright reddy red, brighter and redder than the photo, which was unexpected, but since I really didn’t have any expectations, I’m fine with it. And really, my hair looks rich and dark and festive, perfect for winter and the holiday season.

Repeat customers get cuts for the insanely low price of $15, so really I have no excuse for waiting such a long time. Especially when I feel so pretty after I get it done.

Oh, and while we were waiting for the color to set, the stylist convinced me to get a pedicure, my first ever. I was embarrassed about my wintery forested calves, but other than that, it was really nice!! And my toes look so pretty! And my feet are so soft! I have a feeling that will not be my last pedicure.