When my 19 year old son wanted to take a picture of the sunrise from our back deck, I knew it must have been something special. This is what we witnessed. The temperature had dropped into the 30’s so there was steam coming off the lake. The gold and orange from the sunrise were amazing. The picture doesn’t show the vividness of the colors, but it still gives a pretty good glimpse of what we saw.
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Psalms 19:1
My goal over the weekend was to sort through the garage just enough to be confident that I had all my necessary boxes in the house. I began plugging away at this project, but when hubby was wanting to power-wash, he enlisted the help of Jordan and me to deal with the carpet and pad on the front porch. We had ripped out the carpet before we even moved our stuff in and threw it on the front porch. That was such a freeing feeling knowing that we would NOT get notified by the home owners association to remove it. I could have left it there for months if I wanted too, although I know we wouldn’t have. We ended up bagging and rolling up the pieces. We had 30 bags in all by the time we were done. (The back of the Suburban is full. Tim took half the bags to the office to throw out and hauled the other half to the street.)
While we were outside, we started trimming trees that were hitting the car as we drove in the driveway. We just couldn’t stop. I decided to tackle the tree at the front of the house since it was way over-grown. I got Jordan to help and in no time, the front of the house was much improved.
Before
Later that evening we met the neighbors. They were out walking and stopped by to introduce themselves. I got a call from them the next day asking if I wanted some liriope. I hadn’t planned on doing much gardening, but I could not turn down an offer like that. I planted them around the stone in front of the tree. They don’t look like much now, but I definitely have a jump start on spring.
After
It was sure a nice diversion to be outside and beautify something. Now back to the big job of finding a place for all my things.
Wow! I thought I got rid of most of my stuff. Boy was I wrong. I am up to my elbows in boxes of things that I don’t know what to do with. It definitely was a luxury to have the space we did at our old house. I could keep bathroom cleaning supplies in each bathroom. Now I have 7 bottles of toilet bowl cleaner-one from each of the 5 bathrooms and a couple of spares that I kept in the storage room. I had NINE bottles of Windex. I had no clue I had so many cleaning products.
My kitchen is another story. Where am I going to put all this stuff? My pantry and cabinets are full. I can’t believe I had a place for all of this at our old house, and there are still more kitchen boxes in the garage.
I had a wonderful spice drawer organized with all of my spices and now I don’t even have cabinet or drawer room for them. Part of my spices are still in a box and the rest are on my countertop.
Our three car garage is piled to the brim with barely room to walk.
My dining room is the stopping point as we bring things in from the garage. We stop because we don’t know where to put anything. 
My fireplace is my go to spot for my excessive cleaning products. I need to keep them accessible since the house is in dire need of deep cleaning before I feel comfortable putting anything away. (Jordan is anxious to start a fire in it already. I think we would burn the house down or create a huge explosion with all those chemicals.)
Our master closet is half the size of our old one. I don’t think we could cram one more thing in it.
All these boxes still need to find a home. The cabinets in our master bath are already full so I don’t quite know what I am going to do with them.
Round two of purging has begun. Looks like we will likely be having another sale in the spring. Any suggestions on how to go about further purging? How do you decide what to keep and what to move on?
We are in, but far from settled. We finally have the internet again. Yeah! It’s amazing how dependent I’ve become on it. I see a lot of work interesting projects on the horizon.
Before we actually began moving in our household belongings, I wanted to paint the ENTIRE interior. Pretty grand plans I know, considering we were going to do this ourselves with a little help from our friends. My main concern was getting rid of the smokers smell. I figured ripping out the carpet, getting a coat of primer on on the walls and having the air ducts cleaned would help tremendously. Unfortunately we didn’t get possession until one day before we needed to be out of our old house so I had to change my plans a little bit significantly. We focused on the two upstairs bedrooms and the office since they had the largest pieces of furniture that I wanted to get moved in while I had lots of help on moving day. Wallpaper border needed to be removed. Curtains needed to be taken down. Blinds needed to be cleaned. Wood work and light fixtures needed to be taped off and covered with plastic. The list seems endless. I had some wonderful help throughout the day and couldn’t have done what we did with out the help of family and friends.
Tim and the boys were cleaning the garage since we knew most of our things would be stored there for a while until we got everything painted. By the time my brother, John, was able to come after he got off work, and my friend’s husband Mike came by to show us how to use the sprayer we were borrowing from, I was exhausted and I didn’t get any more pictures. We were covered in fine white speckles-this definitely would have been worth a picture, but oh well! We worked until midnight and were up again early the next morning to begin moving. It was a short night, but we were as ready as we could be for moving day.
Here are some highlights of our house before anything was moved in.
Living Room
Kitchen & Dining Room
Master Bedroom
Family Room (We bought the pool table with the house.)
The house definitely has lots of potential!
We survived the sale. Of course I knew we would, but it was a hectic three days. My expectations were to just thin things out a bit, but I could not believe how much things were thinned out. It was starting to get really hard by the third day when we consolidated all the remaining small items into the living room, kitchen and dining room. Every other room in the house is empty except for the larger pieces of furniture and even much of that is spoken for, but hasn’t been picked up yet.
As people were buying and carrying things out, my heart started doubting whether or not I should have done this. I just got that sinking kind of feeling that I had made a mistake. I think in reality it was just seeing the voids around the house that were so perfect in my mind before. I’m really not that attached to my stuff, but it was a reflection of me and that is what I saw walking out the door. I’m better today and still very excited to move at the end of the week. The thought of a fresh start on the horizon with the anticipation of making this next house a home is a very pleasant thought.
Here are a few pictures of our house after the sale was complete. I still have several large pieces of furniture, of which I am thankful, but several pieces still need to be picked up plus there are a few pieces that I would still like to sell.
Our empty family room-(The couches sold.)
Our Living room
All the decorative accessories that are left are in the dining room.
The master bed room (I even sold my bedding)
The few things left from my kitchen are in the next two pictures.
Finishing packing should be easy. I just need to box up the few things sitting out and the few thing still in my cabinets that we use every day, and then we will be ready to go.
Call me crazy, but I am having a huge sale this week to clear out most of our “stuff.” It is amazing how things accumulate over the years. We have a tendency to hold on to way too many things. Since we are downsizing, I know we need to get rid of a lot because it just won’t all fit in the house we are moving to. It has been hard to know what to keep and what to sell, so I am putting a price on virtually anything dispensable. It is amazing how freeing this is.
I have been reflecting on how our “stuff” ends up owning us. We end up spending so much time maintaining and organizing what we have that I feel like we don’t enjoy our time the way we should. Another thing I have noticed over the years is that the things we do hold on to “because we might use it someday,” get lost in the sea of things we are holding on to. Often times I can’t find what I know I have somewhere so I spend way too much time looking. I have been taking the opportunity to go through each area of the house and asking myself, “Why am I keeping this? What is the likelihood that I will really use this someday?”
I am only slightly sentimental when it comes to my “stuff,” but I like to think that I am practical, so I hold on to things. I have several boxes of things in my storage room that haven’t seen the light of day in years. Moving has given me reason to open each box and evaluate why I am keeping the things that I am keeping.
Here is a box that has my old 45rpm records from my teen age years as well as old cassette tapes, and reel to reel film. It also has some Christmas albums my mom used to play when I was growing up.
I took the time to go through this box very thoughtfully. I decided to let go of the old 45’s. I don’t own a record player and even if I did, I know I wouldn’t play these. If I really want to hear an old song, all I have to do is get on the internet- so out of the box those go. The Christmas albums are another story. I decided to keep those. (My slight, sentimentality was surfacing.) In reality, there is more of a chance that I will listen to these. There is something about one song coming after the other that brings back memories.
I got rid of the the cassette tapes of speakers, sermons, conferences, etc. that we had accumulated over the years. If I haven’t listened to them again in all these years, I know I won’t listen to them in the future. There was also a collection of cassette tapes from my hubby’s overseas mission trip from the mid ‘70’s. He voice recorded his trip on these tapes and captured the sounds of the various countries he visited. Those will be fun to listen to some day-hopefully soon. Of course I kept the reel to reel tapes. (Note to self-convert those to DVD so we can watch them more easily.)
I also have a three boxes of video and computer parts and cables. My thinking has been, “I might need this some day.” I know I have saved too much so I was brutal in purging. 
I minimized this monstrosity to one small box that I am fairly certain we will use.
When it comes to furniture and decor, I am keeping family heirlooms, but most everything else has a price tag on it. This is where most people think I am extremely crazy. “You’ll just have to buy new furniture when you move,” they say. I really am OK keeping the furniture I have, it would just be nice not to have to move it and I highly doubt that it will all sell. My goal is to just thin things out a bit and then move what doesn’t sell. In the off chance that my major pieces do all sell, yes, I will buy new furniture, but my passion is decorating, and I love to try out new ideas so I won’t mind shopping for new furniture-if I get a fair price for my old furniture.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if we didn’t even have to rent a moving truck? (Wishful thinking, I know.) I do plan to be a lot more selective about the stuff we bring into our home in the future.
Closing is less than two weeks away. Here is a sneak peak at the house we are buying.
The front of the house.
The back of the house.
The view from the back of the house.
I love fall. The weather is pleasant and it is so great to be outside. Grilling dinner is much more enjoyable when it isn’t 100 degrees outside. We usually eat dinner a bit on the late side so sometimes it is starting to get a dark by the time we are cooking on the grill. It’s not so dark that we can’t see, but it is a little difficult to see if the meat is done. I really knew that a light over the grill would be very helpful, but I didn’t want to spend a lot of money so I came up with a cheap solution.
I began with a basic utility type light and removed the clamps by simply unscrewing them from the base. I gave it a couple of coats of Oil Rubbed Bronze spray paint on the outside and taped off all but about an inch of the inside. (I wanted to keep the reflective quality of the metal for improved lighting.)
I bought some additional lamp wire that had a plug on the end. I cut off the plug from the utility lamp and joined the two wires with electrical tape.
I weaved the cord through a chain and mounted the it on a couple of hooks attached to the ceiling over the grill.
I tucked the remaining wire into paintable wire concealer that sticks to the wall. (Sorry, forgot to get a picture of that, but you can see it in the left corner if you look really hard.)
This is my finished project.
