Four Good Things About Moving

A Friday Hodgepodge Note to Myself

My wife's career is taking us to New Orleans, and we move during the next few months. I like New Orleans, but really, really hate moving.

Today's post is as much about giving myself a way to stay motivated for all the drudgery this will entail as it is this blogger's "feeding of the beast."

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Image by Onur Bahçıvancılar, via Unsplash, license.

1. This move is my big chance blast away a big accumulation of junk we don't need. Up until about five years ago, we had to move frequently with babies or toddlers in tow.

In addition to my wife and her parents being ... overexuberant ... with toy purchases during that time, the combination of frequent moves and the time demands of child care meant that lots of things ended up in boxes that there simply wasn't time to go through.

(This situation is in part due to us having used professional packers twice in a row. They are fast, but they have no clue about what you may want to keep or throw out, so it all goes, and it will be boxed by room, with no other thought as to organization.)

I have some time to go through those things now. More importantly, with the kids having outgrown most of those things, I also have a free hand to discard or donate most of it.

2. This move will allow me to consolidate and organize what's left. The ditching-out is huge. I made some progress organizing the garage shortly after we moved here, but without a clear mandate to get rid of things, the effort stalled and left me with no overflow space.

Things like art supplies ended up being stored in multiple odd places, depending on where we could find space or who put them away. Predictably, this sometimes led to things being lost and bought again.

I am finally about to round up all of this stuff (and a couple of other categories of things), thin the herd, and pack it. On the other end, I'll know what we have and how much, and can have a designated place for it.

This will save time, money, and hassle on the other end.

3. We can have pets on the other end. We will have a bigger (and less cluttered) house after we move. We've all wanted cats for about the past year, but I didn't see a way to do so here without the massive clearout sparked by the move: It was already too easy for the house to get very messy very fast, and cleaning up required an inordinate amount of decluttering.

I did not want to add pets to the mix.

4. We can entertain more often on the other end. In a small, cluttered house, the prospect of hours of straightening and cleaning always came with that of guests. I have for some time wished we could ... just have people over.

The big clearout will make it easier to maintain a regular cleaning schedule and enlist the kids's help (in the form of picking up after themselves or taking over chores they're interested in).

We're looking to augment this with a professional coming in once or twice a month, since we won't have to worry about things we actually want or need being misplaced by a third party anymore.

-- CAV