How to Move Again without Losing My Mind

I hate moving. Truly, I do. Some folks might like purging their homes of excess stuff and setting up house somewhere else. Yeah, I'm not one of those people.

But unfortunately, I have to move. We're renting a home while my husband is in law school and our contract is up. We had hoped to renew for at least another year, but sadly the home may be going into foreclosure. So, it's time to find a new place to call home.

We're headed to California for most of the summer, so we're taking a risk and putting our house-hunting on hold for a bit. I'm praying that we find another rental in the same school zone. I adore the elementary school that Ella has been going to for the past two years and don't want to change. So, we'll be storing our belongings until we find a new place later in the summer after our return from California. We're so thankful for friends who are willing to put a roof over our heads for the few weeks between when we need to move out and when the girls are done with school.

So, in an effort to procrastinate from the actual packing, I researched some ways to make the move easier. It's what I call productive procrastination. Hopefully, I don't procrastinate so much that these tips become useless! :) Here are some great articles that I found:

• Moving On: Tips for an Organized Move from Organized Home - Years ago when we moved into our first home, I read up on moving. I stumbled upon this article and LOVED the idea of using printer labels to mark the boxes. Organized Home recommends putting one label in the upper left-hand corner of each side of the box. That way you don't have to turn the box a specific way to see what's inside. Next stop? The store to get some labels!
• How to Move & Keep Track of Your Stuff from Find Joy in the Journey - I gotta say, Shannon is brilliant! Her tips will come in soooo handy since we'll be living across town for a few weeks and storing some, but not all, of our belongings. I'm sure there will be some things that we need for those few weeks before we start living out of our suitcases in California. She uses labels for the boxes too, but I'd use four labels per box instead of one.
• An Essential Checklist for Moving into a New Home from Simple Mom - Tsh has some great tips for actual move-IN day. Our move-out and move-in days are going to be separated by a few months. If I'm smart, I'll make sure that we have the essentials packed and easily identifiable before we head west. Then, after the road trip home, we'll be all set to move-in to our new place.

Do you have any great moving tips? I'm all ears!

Moving Monday: Reading while Packing

Honestly, I can't say that I'm a big fan of packing. Oh, I like to have things organized and packed...I just have a hard time getting myself motivated to actually do the work. It seems like a rather solitary task. But, there's no getting around it. We're moving in eleven days, so I must pack. I've been experimenting with ways to make it a more enjoyable (or at least a less boring) task.

Recently, I discovered a cool little feature that my Kindle has -- text to speech. I can actually have it read to me as I declutter and pack boxes. It is by no means perfect. My main complaints are that it:

• speaks in a very "roboto" voice
• mispronounces things sometimes
• and really doesn't know how to pause appropriately between chapter titles and main text.

But all of those things aside, it is pretty cool to be able to hear a book while I packing. I don't know that it would be great for an adventurous sort of novel. (Roboto voices don't really convey drama.) However, it has worked well for a more "self-help" style of book. I've been having it read Organized Simplicity: The Clutter-Free Approach to Intentional Living by Tsh Oxenrider and truly it has been great. I'm working my way through a book that is inspiring me to get rid of the clutter as I pack.

If you have a Kindle and have never used this feature, it's super easy to use! All you need to do is:

• Open the book that you want to have read to you
• Click on the Aa button (down by the spacebar)
• Then move the cursor down to "turn on" right next to Text-to-Speech.
• It will automatically start reading from the page that you are on. If you need to pause it, just press Aa button again and click "pause" next to Text-to-Speech.

Maybe, just maybe, I'll finish this book while packing and be inspired to start a new clutter-free approach to intentional living in Williamsburg!

Pink-Washed Toy Crates

A few months ago, my husband gave me two wooden crates as part of my 10 days of anniversary gifts. They were symbols of the year of marriage when several family members and friends moved away AND of our impending move for law school. Initially, I wasn't sure what I was going to do with them since I didn't really have a place to store two wooden crates. Then, I realized that they fit perfectly underneath the girls' Stork Craft Caribou Bunk Bed! What a perfect way to store some of their toys in a very child-friendly and good looking way.

Of course, I couldn't just leave them as unfinished wood. Not only isn't that "princessy" enough, the wood is kinda rough and just might give my girlies some splinters. Since the crates are going to be used by children, I thought a more distressed finish might be in order. Then I won't have to worry about if they ding them up. Judging by the looks of their bunkbed now, they WILL ding them up. So, I went for a white-washed look. Scratch that. Pink-washed look.

Here's what I used:

• wooden crate ($10 regular price at Michael's - only $6 with 40% coupon!)
• sandpaper
• polyurethane
• paint (I used a $5 "Daddy's Little Girl" Paint Pod from Ace Hardware)
• water
• paintbrush
• glides

I am no professional, but here's how I did it:

1. I smoothed out the wooden crates with a quick sanding and then removed the dust with a damp paper towel.
2. I decided to put a coat of poly on first to seal the wood. This would also bring out the natural color of the wood in the areas where the paint was thin. Not sure if this is exactly necessary, but it's what I did. (In retrospect, part of me wishes that I had stained the wood dark brown first. The other part of me realizes that the crates were enough work as it was.)
3. In a disposable cup, I mixed a small amount of paint with an equal amount of water. I brushed this on the crate and let it dry. This gave the crate a see-through pink coating. Wood knots were still visible.
4. Once that was dry, I dry-brushed some pink paint on. To do this, I dipped a dry paint brush in the paint and blotted most of the paint off onto a paper towel. Then, I lightly brushed it onto the crate for a streaky effect. I let it dry and then repeated until I got the look I wanted.
5. To finish it off, I put a coat of non-yellowing polyurethane to seal it all up and make it easier to wipe clean. Because with kids, everything needs to be able to wiped clean easily.
6. To make the crate easier to slide underneath the bed, we attached some cheap glides on the bottom corners of the crate.

To make it easy for the girls to tell the contents of the crates, I made some little labels out of scrapbooking paper. I made sure to use words as well as pictures for my non-reader Lucie.

For other how-to ideas, stop by The Lettered Cottage for "How To's Day" on the last Tuesday of the month.

Moving Monday: The Girls' Room

Okay, this move is real. After visiting our new town, I'm a bit overwhelmed, just as I knew I would be. After looking at housing options, it is abundantly clear that we have about twice as many possessions as we will have space for. This is pretty much the case for every room in the house. Yikes!

Since it is usually the messiest room in the house, I decided to start on the Girls' Room this weekend. The challenges I see with their room are:

Closet Space - Most likely there will be half as much space as they currently have. Also, the closet bar is too high for them to use on their own. So, unfortuantely, they end up leaving clothes on the floor far too often.

Dresser - Right now they have an Ikea Hemnes 8-drawer dresser. Honestly, I don't think this will work after we move.  It was great when it doubled as a changing table, but we're past that stage of life now. It just takes up too much floor space. I've got to find something smaller.

Toys & Books - We have toys and books covering pretty much every space in the room -- on the bookshelf, in the closet, under the bed, etc.

The most obviously solution is to get rid of A LOT of things. I'm working on that. Hopefully, we'll have a garage sale soon and then donate whatever doesn't sell. However, I also want to make things easier for the girls to keep their room clean. Here are a few ideas that I came up with:

Buy an adjustable closet doubler. I've never actually used one of these, so I'm not sure how effective they are. But, I figure it's worth a shot. I'm hoping that this will double the hanging space and make it a bit easier for the girls to get their clothes (and put them away) on their own. It frustrates me to no end to find clothes all over their bedroom and closet floors. An extender like the Neu Home Closet Doubler from Amazon or the Real Simple Double Hang Closet Rod from Bed Bath & Beyond just might work.

Make toy storage easy for the girls to use on their own. A few years ago, my husband built a beautiful bookcase for the girls. We use it to store both books and toys. However, some of the toys are difficult for the girls to get down on their own. The puzzle basket is just far too heavy for a 3-year old to lift off of the shelf. So, I've decided that wooden crates under the bed are the way to go. Brett bought a couple of them for me for our anniversary to symbolize the move that we're making. I'm going to buy two more. They fit perfectly under the bunk bed. One will hold blocks, one will hold puzzles and then each of the girls will get one for their own possessions. Whatever doesn't fit on the bookshelf or in their box will have to go. Sad, but true.

Change shoe storage. Right now the girls keep their shoes in the bottom drawer of their dresser. However, if we downsize the dresser, we won't have room for shoes there. A 3-tier stackable wood shoe shelf on the floor of the closet just might be the solution as long as it doesn't interfere with the closet doubler. They can each have one shelf for their shoes and the top can hold larger shoes like rainboots.

So, these are my plans for now. Today I'm going to finish up "pink-washing" the toy crates and then get the girls to decide on which treasures to keep. (Check back tomorrow if you want to see the finished crates!) I'm crossing my fingers that these solutions will work for all of us.

Moving Monday: Tackling the Desk

Two weeks ago, I made a pledge to myself to choose one area of my house to clean/organize/dejunk. I started by making some changes to our laundry system (aka, the pile of dirty clothes in my master closet). Then, my plans got a little derailed by the addition of an Amazon Kindle to my life. I've decided that I'm going to have to reward myself with reading time after I accomplish the important tasks ahead of me. Lately, I've been tackling my desk.

My desk has always been a struggle for me to keep clean and organized. I have a tendency to pile things until my desk looks as if it is home to the leaning tower of Pisa. Its nearly constant state of disorganization is something that I know drives my husband nuts. Once I became a stay-at-home-mom, I tried to organize it. I bought a spiffy red leather-like desktop organizer with a little drawer. It was cute...but it was for horizontal storage. Houseworks clued me into the beauty of vertical, rather than horizontal, desk storage. So, as cute as the organizer was, it just wasn't effective for me. Since my desk doesn't have a file drawer, I needed a desktop file. I picked up a Snap-N-Store Desktop File and matching magazine file from Staples.

To help organize my space, I:

• Created new file folders: I went through the stacks of paper on my desk and made new file folders for the types of items that I wanted to keep on my desk. I used my spiffy Brother Label Maker to make neat file labels and satisfy the perfectionist in me. Now that it is clear where things go on my desk, I won't have to hunt for stamps or bills and neither will my husband.
• Cleared out the desk drawers of non-essentials: Awhile ago, I thought it was a great idea to store some craft materials in one of my three small desk drawers. Guess what? Not a good idea. I don't craft at my desk, so they were really just taking up precious desk real estate. So, out they went and into the craft cupboard. Instead I've filled the drawers with necessities like envelopes, pens, notepads, etc. Now I won't be frustrated when I try to mail a bill and can't find an envelope.
• Cleared the desktop of non-essentials: Somehow if something doesn't have a home, it ends up on my desktop. So, our Flip Video Camera and Canon Powershot Digital Elph camera have resided there. Once I cleared out the drawers of the unnecessary, I found our electronics a new home in one of the drawers. Hallelujah!
• Cleaned out the pen cup: My pen cup somehow always manages to fill with pens that don't work and pencils that aren't sharpened. So, I filled it with pens that work and mechanical pencils.

My, oh my, does it feel good to have an organized desk! I just might reward myself with a book on my Kindle.

Moving Monday: Gearing up to Move

It appears as if the uncertainty of our plans in the Fall and possible impending move is weighing a bit on me. I have so much to do, to get rid of, and to organize that it overwhelms me at times. What am I saying?! It overwhelms me on a daily basis. I am so busy caring for two young girls, working a part-time job, and managing the house and our finances that I have a hard time even thinking about what to do to get ready for a move. And yet I know that if I don't start now, I am going to be seriously stressed out this summer.

So, I've decided that now is the time for action. Now is the time to get organized. Now is the time to start downsizing and deciding what will be moving with us. To keep me on task, each Monday I'm going to share about what area that I'm working on to help me gear up for the move. I figure that by blogging about it, I'll hopefully stay on track and maybe even help someone else out there that struggles in the same ways that I do.

This past week, I realized that one area that I struggle in is the laundry. There is no getting around it. We need clean clothes. With four people in our house, the laundry can get out of hand quickly. I've heard my sister sing the praises of doing a daily load, but I've never quite managed that. To do a daily load, I need it to be quick and easy so that I actually do it. My "laundry system" just hasn't been really conducive to that. We are not fortunate enough to have a laundry room in our condo. Instead, our washer and dryer are in the garage, and our dirty laundry collects in a large laundry basket in my walk-in closet. More often than not, the dirty laundry overflows and spills onto the floor. Then, when it is time to wash the laundry, I sort it in several piles that litter my bedroom floor for the day. If I were to do a daily load, I'd still have to sort through the huge pile to come up with a load to wash.

This past weekend, I decided that I needed to change our system. We needed a laundry sorter! It would help me sort throughout the week and quickly see when there was a full load ready to be washed. Revolutionary, I know. Since we don't have a laundry room and our bathrooms aren't that large, it just never occured to me to get one.

I searched online at Target and  discovered this beautiful seagrass triple laundry sorter for $100. (I also found it today for $70 at Amazon.) Honestly, I just couldn't justify spending that much on something to hold my laundry. Someday, maybe. Today, no. Yesterday we went to Walmart, and I found a 4-bag laundry sorter for only $29. Hey, four bags are better than three right?

It has removable bags with handles, so that I can just lift out a full load to be washed and take it to the garage with me. It also has wheels so that I can wheel the entire sorter into the kitchen (near our garage) if I want to do a marathon cleaning session.

No, I won't be able to store it out in the open like the seagrass one, but it is a workable solution for our closet.

It's already working...I've got my daily load in the wash right now!