Officially “Moved” In

Last Friday, Danica and I finally signed the paperwork and became homeowners again. That capped almost exactly 5 months of living nomadically. Many campgrounds and many Airbnb’s later, we’re done. Saturday we met the movers at the house, as well as my Aunt’s husband Ed and his grandson (who graciously offered to drive over some items in another storage unit in Franklin), and we had our stuff. Then the fun began.

It’s amazing how much stuff people accumulate. I think Danica and I probably better than most when it comes to the culling of errata, but we’re certainly not minimalists, as you can see. (I’ve toyed with that aesthetic for many years, but it runs up against my collector nature, too. Oh well.) We read Marie Kondo’s “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” years ago like many others, and we did go through a pretty significant paring down of things in the house. When we were packing for the move to New Hampshire, we again go rid of a lot of things we didn’t need or didn’t want (or pay for) move across the country. But still.

I’m a firm believer in the maxim that you will fill whatever space you’re allotted. It’s almost a sub-conscious thing, and takes considerable effort to not let that happen.

This is a smaller house than we had in Tigard, but a bit, when comparing livable areas. The big difference with this house is we have a full basement (or as I’m told you absolutely are required to call it, a “cellar”), where to store things. This means we can use the garage for cars and exercise, bedroom closets for clothes, etc., and not use them for things that aren’t fit to purpose. In the end it should result in a more livable, peaceful domain.

As we’ve told the girls, this is a journey, not an event. It’s going to take literally months to unpack, catalog, sort, and store properly all the stuff we have. On that road, we’ll probably eject more things from our holdings. Hopefully the inverse of that maxim is true (for us) and we’ll fit the space, but shrinking, rather than growing.