Open House tomorrow! Let's sell our house.

Tomorrow is a big day for us! Our house is on the market and we're having an open house for viewing. We moved our beds out on July 3, and now it's July 25th and everything is out and the house has been painted and fixed up pretty for selling. What a process. It's a very emotional thing to do. Our current apartment still has so many boxes to be sorted through and put away, it's overwhelming. But...hopefully the house will sell quickly and we can focus on the next step...unpacking and a second wave of purging. I hope to find the rest of my bathroom items soon. Then I'll stop using Brian's deodorant. LOL. I feel like I see it every once in a while but don't get it out, then I forget where I saw it.

See what we love about this house!

The hardest part so far for me has been bedtime. It's hard to get children to sleep as it is, but when we're all sleeping in such close quarters, it's extra hard. Our little guy (2 yrs old) is now inconsistently napping, and staying up super late at night. He's also throwing more tantrums than I've ever seen him do since we've moved into the apartment. I'm not sure if it's all the change or what, but it's hard. These little ones have to be super adaptive and they're doing their best, but you can tell it's hard on them too. I'm hoping that now that the house is on the market we can get ourselves situated and get a routine set up in our apartment.

It's so beautiful!

Speaking of our apartment, it's been 22 days that we have been living in Brian's parent's basement apartment, and it seems to be going really well. For me the nights are the hardest because I know his parents can hear all the chaos going on trying to get all these kids settled down, but they haven't said anything. The dogs are having their own issues. We don't have a fenced in yard here, so they've been out in the yard on leads. Otis is having a super hard time with it. Future plans include exploring an electric fence to help the dogs. They need to run. It's hard to watch them be sad.

I miss this sink and faucet. I'll put it on my want list for the new house. 

We are so excited about our future! We are learning each day about what we want our next home to be like. I'll share some of those ideas later along with some pictures of our apartment space. It's so spacious and we couldn't have asked for a better plan for our in-between time. We have all been so busy getting the house ready to sell that we have not had time to focus on  the unpacking and organizing part. I can't wait to hang my Elfa shelves here. It's going to change the way we organize our downsized space. Organization will be our key. My goal is that everything has a place and if I can't come up with a place, then we don't need the item.

I watched an episode of tiny house tonight and I decided that I'm going to start watching those shows to see how to make better use of our space. I'm pretty sure we can learn a lot about using our space wisely from people who build those small spaces. Who knows...maybe Brian and I and our 4 kids and 2 dogs will build ourselves a tiny house. Lord help me!

God speed my friends. I'll keep you updated as we continue on this journey.

Moving is hard!!

As excited as I am to move and downsize our lives, it's hard to get rid of your stuff! Our basement is full of toys from birth to age 7, clothes in crates for hand me downs, and tons of stuff that we have just collected over the years. I went to the house today with 2 of my muscular teenage nephews to start moving things out of the basement. When I got in the house I went into panic mode. 

I don't know what I was thinking. We have so much stuff!! We have to get the house ready to sell. The first thing we wanted to do was get everything out of the basement so that the guys can come in and paint. So the boys did that today. Thank God for the boys!! There are probably a couple more hours of clearing out to do and then the next phase can start. 

I loaded up the Tahoe with some goodies and of course everyone's favorite horse, and came back to my peaceful new apartment. 

My mother in law is cooking some wonderful smelling pasta dish for dinner and I got to sit down and relax and write about my day for a few minutes. I'm pretty sure this is going to work out!! I'll post some pictures tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Project 333 for me!

Since we decided to take on this new found freedom (as I am starting to look at it) I've decided to seriously free myself from my wardrobe as well. In the next few days I will be purging my clothing again to try out the 33 items of clothing thing. Now before you think I've gone totally nuts, I haven't felt as at peace with my life decisions as I did when I decided to move home to start my life with Brian, so this is good! If I don't love it, if it doesn't fit, then it's gone. Freedom feels good I think. I'll let you know how it goes. Whew!!! Lots of changes. 

Our new journey

My family is embarking on a new journey. We are doing a MAJOR life shift and moving our family into a temporary housing situation so that we can plan and build our dream house and live debt free while we do it.

We have 4 kids: 3 daughters ages 10, 7, 4 and one son age 2. We had a friend about a year ago whose house burned down. It was awful. A year later they had rebuilt their home and were forced to have a do-over. They rebuilt their house with changes to make the house better, and only brought in things they needed. There was no clutter left to bring back in with them. Doesn't that sound amazing? Not the burned down house part, but the rebuild your house of your 40 year old dreams, not your 25 year old dreams, and only have in the house the things you really need? It sounds good to me!

So for a year or so now we've been talking about giving ourselves an intentional do-over. We are 42 and we want our children to grow up in the house of our dreams and to be able to enjoy all of it. We also don't want to find ourselves in 20 years saying that we wish we would have built a different house or didn't use credit cards, or cleared out all that stuff in the basement before we got too old to do it on our own. More importantly, we were being ran over by our stuff. None of our things had homes, the children's toys had taken over, mail had piled up. It was all just too much!

We bit the bullet! We made the decision we were going to move. Now we just needed to figure out where. We found a great townhouse that wasn't too far from where we were living, but it was in the wrong school district and we decided that lying to keep our kids in the district was not an option. We are okay with changing schools when we find our permanent place, but in the interim, we wanted to stay in the district. It's now been 3 weeks since the decision has been made and we have moved into an apartment in my in-laws basement. It's huge, in our school district, and we have a live in support network! My mother in law loves to do laundry and bathe my littles, so I might get a little spoiled. Can't get much better than that!!

In this move, we have decided that we will only take what we need and very little else. We brought our mattresses, our clothes, and basic kitchen utensils and necessities. They already had couches, so we are selling ours. Most of our large items in our house are going to family members or friends who need or are interested in having them. This way we can buy only what is necessary to go into the new house and be intentional about the size of what goes into the new house. On top of all these things, when we sell our house we plan to pay off our cars and any other debt we have acquired in our 8 year marriage. This will allow us to save enough money for the house and set ourselves up for success moving forward.

We have involved all of our kids in our new house planning. It's really interesting to hear their input on what they want us to have. The bigs have made many model homes for us on Minecraft. They are so cool. They all have lists of colors for bedrooms and things they'd like to see.

The first part, us getting out of our house, is completed. Next, we will get the rest of our items out via sale, family members, friends, donate, etc. Then we begin preparing to sell. We will paint the house and replace the carpet and then put the house on the market to sell. The ball is rolling and it's rolling  pretty fast! We have been in the basement now for 5 days. So far it's going well. We are finding a place for our things and scrutinizing all the things we bring in the house.

I am trying to use this journey as an opportunity to live simply and intentionally. I am starting with this blog www.becomingminimalist.com.  This sounds like a logical place to start right?? Join me on our journey. I'll be writing periodically about our challenges and our successes. I never thought I'd hear myself talk about becoming a minimalist, but I think I'm ready.

Electronics what???

We decided that we were going to take a break from electronics in our house for a little while. Basically the only thing available is the radio. All tablets are put away, the laptops are all cord free (so no laptops), and the radio is pretty much always playing. I think our kids, like many others in todays world, are too dependent on electronics for fun. So...this house is getting a shake down! 

We are on day 3. Day 1 was a dry run, Jane's computer died and she didn't get it charged. But there weren't any fights. We finished the night with movie night in our bed. We watched The Book of Life all cuddled up together. It was awesome. Then everyone went to bed.

Day 2 was our first day with Grace back at our house and so it was full family...zero electronics. It was interesting. The littles played Legos all day, and Grace joined the fun with Kate, and we ended it all with trivia that had us all laughing! What a fun night. Then...bedtime...I think Grace said about 50 times between 8:30 and 9:00 "this is so boring. I'm not doing this." Then Kate had an epic meltdown that was awesome! Not in a good way. It lasted about 15 minutes, and was just a WOW moment! Crazy! Brian finally told the big girls that they needed to retreat to their rooms before Kate blew up, and the big girls read and read and read. Such a good ending.

Today is day 3. It's going pretty well. This has caused me to come up with creative things to do with the children that don't include the tv or them watching a screen.

Kate, David and I finger painted on tupperware bowl lids and got pretty messy. so much fun! David wasn't quite sure of it all, and didn't get very messy. Kate loved it and thought it was so fun!! A little sensory play time certainly never hurt these preschoolers. I'll have to see what I can come up with for tomorrow.

Now it's quiet time. Kate is curled up on my bed and David is napping. This could be the beginning of a family transition that I think we need. Say a quick prayer that this goes well. I'll report back soon.