Packing It In and Packing It Up

The whole household has been in an uproar for the past couple of weeks as the the countdown to the closing on the new house looms and the packing process progresses. (say that 3 times fast!) Yesterday Mary suggested we treat ourselves to one of the casino buffets for Sunday brunch. The food's okay, the price is right, we don't have to cook or do the dishes AND the champagne/mimosas are free.

The problem with buffets is that I eat too much. I've been sticking to my New Year's resolution of losing weight and it's been slow, but progress is being made. One walk through the buffet line and I can feel all those hard-lost pounds creeping back on. By the second walk-through, well, you might as well staple the French toast to my hips. Actually, I did quite well. I tried to choose healthy foods (hard to do), ate modest portions, chose a sugar-free dessert (read that “chemically sweetened and lots of fat”) and the hardest part, drank only one glass of champagne (no OJ).

Luckily, I had some incentive to eat conservatively. Ahead of me in line were two very obese people who waddled through the line piling their plates high enough to require sideboards … and it wasn't their first trip to the buffet line. Imagining myself doing the waddle was all it took to keep me on track. Despite my self-imposed eating limitations, we all had a good time at the buffet before returning home and immersing ourselves in some more heavy-duty packing.

In no time, we had black newsprint-stained hands as we emptied the contents of cupboards and closets, drawers and shelves. David assembled boxes and, once full, stacked them wherever he could find free place. Karen priced and packed items that were designed for the upcoming yard sale. Mary and I worked at carefully wrapping and packing everything we were moving to the new house, leaving out only a few basics to get us through the next week before the move. A sort of controlled chaos ensued. “Where's the packing tape?” “That's not for the yard sale, we're keeping that!” “No, don't pack that; THAT's for the yard sale.” “Did you mark that box?” “Where's the black marker?” By late in the afternoon, we'd accomplished quite a bit … knowing, of course, there's still quite a bit left to do.

All the pictures and decorations are off the walls. How dull and vast and empty all those bare walls look with only picture hangers and nails left to adorn them. Cupboards are empty. Boxes are stacked everywhere. All the little personal tchotchkes that make a house a home are packed up. And now … just more waiting to pack up more stuff, move the stuff and … oh yeah, to unpack it all at the other end, put away the stuff and dispose of all those cardboard boxes and crumbled newspapers.

I'm thinking we'll need another trip through the buffet line.

Getting Our Stuff Together

When a plan comes together, it's always a surprise for us … mostly because it's rare. There always seems to be a “monkey wrench in the works” or a “fly in the ointment”. Murphy's Law always prevails and it still may get us yet, but so far (fingers crossed and knock on wood), our house buying experience has been mostly positive and it all seems to be coming together. We had a few moments of angst when we were at odds with the seller during the negotiations. There have been some minor hiccups in the paperwork stream though it's all digital. Inspections and appraisals have been duly performed. The mortgage company has been quite demanding, but patient David has muddled through it all and all seems be on track … at least at the time of this blog post. We're waiting for the other shoe to drop, but hoping it won't.

Whilst we've been in the process of buying a house, David's sister, Mary, was selling hers and, of course, that's where we live at the moment. She was concerned it would take awhile to sell in the current Las Vegas housing market. We helped her to spiff it up, then she put it on the market. The first person who saw it, made an offer which she accepted. Whew … that was fast! A kind of controlled bedlam has ensued … if bedlam can ever be controlled.

How to dispose of what won't fit into the new house and how to purchase what will be needed? We've scheduled two yard sales on back-to-back weekends to unload all the undesirables which we know other folks will consider treasures. We've made several forays to local thrift shops, used furniture shops and scoured Craigslist for treasures (other people's undesirables) which we want or need.

David just bought an old beater of a pick-up truck (1997 Isuzu) to begin hauling unsaleable, undesirable things away … to make room for the new treasures we've purchased. The new house is larger and we've determined that not only do we need more furniture, we also need different furniture and, of course, different accessories. This reminds me of George Carlin's hilarious old routine about “stuff”. The pick-up seems to run just fine and is definitely suitable for running around town buying, transporting and generally moving “stuff” from one location to another.

The garage is chock-a-block full with labeled packing boxes and furniture on one side, yard sale stuff on the other with barely enough room for Mary's little Fiat to burrow in the middle of it all. There's been subdued excitement over the move. You can only pack so much stuff before it becomes a hassle to unpack it because you need it before it gets moved. The closing dates on the purchase and the sale are roughly two weeks apart allowing us plenty of time to move into the new place and clean out the old. We're patiently waiting for everything to be finalized so we can get settled, but it seems to be taking forever. Good thing there's lots of stuff to buy.