Sharon Thacker, July, Keeping Sane While Moving

We did it!! The move is over and my kids are still alive and I'm still married to the man I love;) The move itself actually turned out to be not that bad. We had some layover with both places so we were able to move lots of stuff over in our mini van during that time. I also forced myself to unpack the stuff as soon as I brought it into the house so it made things easier down the road. All of the trips back and forth were made easier because we really only moved 1/10th of a mile away. The floor plan is almost exactly the same so that helped. The most difficult part was getting our old place cleaned out. Apparently I don't do much "deep" cleaning and should work on that. We did end up getting the place looking almost exactly like it did when we moved in so that should help with the return of our full deposit.

Old home on Indian Hills Terrace

New Home on Indian Hills Drive

The most infuriating thing about the whole process was finding out that the owners of our old town home decided not to move back into it and to re-rent it!! Yep, we moved for nothing. They are not even raising the rent. Why anybody gets rid of decent tenets who pay their rent on time is beyond me.

To keep my sanity through this process I started creating a mental list of all the benefits of moving. Here they are!

1. Only a half wall between the kitchen and dining room. This is HUGE!! The owners in our new town home took down half the wall in the kitchen so now it is open and I can see what is happening in the dining room and living room while I am in thee kitchen. I used to feel banished to the kitchen when I had to cook anything and now I'm part of the happenings.

Before View From My Sink

After View From My Sink

2. Color on the walls. Our old place had a lame grey/white color on all the walls and the new place has lots of different colors- mainly earth tones. Other than the strange mauve color in the kitchen, I like it.

3. Getting rid of stuff and organizing the stuff we have. We got rid of A LOT of stuff. It felt great!! We also found a few things like Woody the stuffed animal who has been on my sewing table for 18 months. I was going to sew his arm back on but my little two year old has claimed him as his own and carried him around during the whole move.

4. More cabinet space. This one is kind of positive and kid of a negative. The owners remodeled the kitchen a few years ago and made a few changes. They took down the wall (like I mentioned), added cabinets and buffet to a bare wall, and then decided to forego having a major appliance. WHAT?

Points if you noticed which one it was. Sadly we didn't notice there was NO OVEN until a few minutes after we signed our lease and handed over the money. I love to make rolls, cookies, breads, casseroles and here I was with no oven in my future. Thankfully they do make counter-top convection ovens that imitate a real ovens. I've used it a few times and it does an ok job.

5. Living the IKEA dream....this is funny because this house is really ALL IKEA. They left us shelves on the walls that are all Ikea. The kitchen cabinets are Ikea (they don't wash up well) along with the master closet, microwave, and many mirrors in the different bedrooms.

6. The basement. It's better than in our old home. There is carpet in the basement so it feels cozier along with a fireplace and a FINISHED laundry room. My old laundry room was a long unfinished spider hallway. The extra bedroom downstairs is also bigger and yes, it has Ikea shelving too!

7. Speaking of laundry.....I have a front loader. I think it cleans my clothes the same as my old top loader but it tells me how many minutes I have left on a load. We also went camping in the rain last weekend and came home with FIVE very soggy sleeping bags. My front loader had no issue washing them up!

8. Real Piano. We have a nice Clavinova that we have had the last couple of years but the owners left their real Yamaha behind so we are enjoying the benefits of having the real piano sound in our house. Our Clavinova is in the basement and will take the spot of the Yamaha when the owners sell it.

We should only be here a year so it will work for us. They left many of their old picture hangers on the walls so I've just tried to hang our pictures in the same spots.

9.The owners forgot their tomato plant!! I have enjoyed a tomato as part of my lunch almost every day since we moved in!

10. Pretty back yard....I do wish it was grass but all the pretty plants and flowers are nice. I have been trying to snag some patio chairs off of craigslist but so far....nothing.

Right before the move I finished my weight loss challenge. It was an 8 week challenge with a $32 buy in with $30 going in the pot. The top Five losers who lost the most percentage of weight loss won along with the top FIVE winner with perfect points. 10 people actually finished with perfect points so the top five of those with the most percentage of weight loss won. The best part.....I WON TENTH PLACE and $150 bucks!! I barely squeaked in and beat out the 10th spot girl by 2 pounds. I lost a total of 18 pounds in eight weeks which is the fastest I have ever lost weight before. Having to keep track of EVERYTHING I ate, exercising FIVE days a week, and having "treats" only one day a week were the major helps. I really liked the group moderator and she had lots of documents and spread sheets to help keep track of it all. She is starting up another group on August 22 and if your interested, I can send you an invite to it on Facebook.

Before and After

I also decided to give up Diet Coke for the whole eight weeks. I technically could have drank it on my free day but decided to take the opportunity to ween my body off of caffeine. It turns out I was crazy addicted to it so the first few weeks were brutal but then after that I rarely thought about it.

This was my first Diet Coke after eight weeks and to celebrate the win we made "Dirty Diet Cokes" (better with a splash of half n half:)

For August I want to completely organize my storage room and guest bedroom for the upcoming visitors we will be having in October. I also want to sew Woody's arm back on after it's 18 month detachment;)