Moving and garage sales

I don't like to move.  That's pretty much just a plain fact of life for me.  I have lived for the last 13 years in an older home that my husband thought would be fun since it has "character" but that just means that it needs to be remodeled.  Don't let yourself be fooled!  We have spent the entire time fixing one thing or another and trying to get it to a nice place.  When we moved into our first home it was small and simple, but it was new construction.  With that however, it meant that we had to put in the yard, fence, landscaping, sprinkler system and finish the basement.  We also chose to build the garage ourselves as well because it gave us a chance to make it larger for less cost.  It was a lot of work, true, but where we spent the majority of our time was finished the way we liked it and when we did a project we just started it and then it was done.  With this house it has been, first tear it apart, clean up the mess, fix what we found that we didn't know we were going to have to fix and then finish the original project. When we moved in I saw all of that - my husband saw a finished basement, landscaping, sprinklers and fence that already existed.  In his mind it was just cosmetic issues and I would "have fun" painting and doing those things.
We've both learned a lot of lessons since then.  I have pictures - before and after - and I will post those in time but my old external hard drive will no longer talk to my new Mac.  So until I get that fixed (and I'm not panicking because my computer whiz brother says he can make that happen!) I will just say that there isn't a single room in the house that is the way I found it.  I have built my diy muscles to body builder status and learned to love paint more than I ever thought possible.  "I can paint that" is a fairly common statement to be heard in our home any more.

But I'm glad we've done it all and the house got to just about where I wanted it to be - just in time for us to move!  Then began the "de-cluttering" process.  I can't believe how much stuff can be crammed into so many little places over the years!  It's really a good thing to go through it all and get rid of things we haven't even seen since I don't know when.  Why have something shoved in a cupboard that is brand new and never used - let someone else have it that is going to use it instead!  I'm really getting a whole new perspective on material possessions these days.  I don't mind going to garage sales occasionally - to get more "stuff" that I paint! But I really hate having them.  I don't like trying to come up with a fair value for my things only to have people want it for less anyway, or the creeper people that walk through and make me a little more careful to lock my doors that night, or just the cluttered mess that it makes in my house and garage when I'm getting ready for it.  Then when it's all done and there's still a lot of stuff left over, I just give to charity.  So why not just do that in the first place?  The $600 we got during the first one, that's why.  But I still don't like them :)

Moving is so stressful and invasive - having strangers walk through my home and make judgements about it - I was so ready for it to be over with way before it was.  On top of it all I couldn't even really bake or be creative in the kitchen because it makes too big of a mess and I certainly couldn't be out of the house within 30 minutes when I'm in the middle of decorating a cake!

These are the times that make life, well, life though.  It's stressful and uncomfortable but we learn a lot and grow as a person.  Yeah.  I am looking forward to a new chapter, however.  My kids are grown (or almost so) and that has been my life for a very long time.  It's time to turn the page and do something new.  Bring it on! In a newer home with less stuff :)