Dear Family and Friends,
The beginning of May we finally got the news: we can move into our house:
1. June!
Instead of telling everyone right away, we decided to wait. It was partially because we were not sure if this was going to work. Our street is small and we knew that as soon as word got out, our landlady would find out and we wanted to tell her ourselves. Until we were relatively certain, we didn’t want to upset anything. Add to this that Thomas has lived in the apartment for 20 years and a certain relationship has developed between them.
We are so excited! But it doesn’t quite feel real. We have been waiting for over 6 months and we were expecting to wait a couple months more.
The people moving out are moving into an apartment complex and their move is dependent on the construction company finishing in time. In German the term is “Zug am Zug” or “Move-to-Move”. It means that every party moves at the same time with the first people leading the pack. We are fortunate that our rent is not too high right now. As we move, we will be looking for a renter for our apartment. That also means we have 1 month to move all our belongings to the new house.
Now that we know that this is going to happen, we can tell everyone! WE ARE MOVING!!!!
Fortunately, we are able to move room for room and do not need to have a major moving day with chaos following. There will be no months of living out of boxes (although there will be months of living on a construction site). We can organize what we move when to fit schedules and weather patterns. Nothing worse than trying to move furniture in the rain. We have taken the first week in June off work and hope to get the lion’s share of the move behind us.
Despite the fact that we haven’t started packing, we do have a plan.
The idea is to move into the house and THEN renovate. It will give us more time in the evenings to work on the house and the motivation to get things done as soon as possible. Who wants to live on a construction site?
Moving like this will also enable us to find whatever we need and move it from one location directly to the new one. Am I missing a spatula in my kitchen? I will look in the old kitchen for it on the weekend instead of digging through boxes and containers.
One goal that we start tackling last autumn is decluttering. Moving seems to be the very best time to sort and declutter. It is easy to question whether something belongs in our “new life”.
Stuff.
We have tons of it. I think most people do.
When I moved to Germany, I got rid of literally an entire trailer full of stuff that just needed to go. Clothes that were too small. Junk that wasn’t worth the flea market. Outdated appliances and I am sure 4 cell phones collected over the years.
That despite the fact that I regularly collected things to donate to charity or sell at flea markets.
It is really humbling to see how much you have and moving seems to be the perfect time to declutter and reduce.
We are moving to a larger home, so it might seem illogical but we both want to take less into the home than we have now.
Our sofa is coming, as are a few pieces of solid oak furniture we can refinish and work into the house.
Other things we will be leaving behind. Kitchens are not part of the apartment here in Germany, but if the new renters want, we will leave our kitchen for them. We need a new one, anyway, and our current kitchen is older.
Some of our furniture we will be replacing.
Now I am not a minimalist. I do own more than 2 pairs of shoes and have a wardrobe full of clothes. Our kitchen is filled with supplies and we have most household appliances and utensils double. We blended households years ago and packed away the things we were not sure we wanted to get rid of. Very little has been unpacked.
Some of it is still packed because we just haven’t had room for it. I am looking forward to unpacking my teapots and nicer tablewares. My craft supplies have been waiting years for me to have room to craft again. Thomas is looking forward to room for his workshop machinery and devices. His screws, nails and other doodads will finally have a home where they can be properly and accessibly stored.
It is so exciting!
On the other hand, I am getting ready for another wave of purging. Every spring I donate a storage box of clothes to the local charity. It is important for me to give away things before they are so far gone no one can use them again. (Except socks. We wear socks in this house until they die a holey death.)
In addition, I hope to have boxes and boxes of things to donate, to sell, to let go. My plan is to go room by room through our apartment and consciously choose what we be taking with us on our new adventure.
Wish me luck.
