This month ended in a bang for us. First we helped out a friend by holding a huge estate sale for her, and then we had to move ourselves to our new home. It feels like we have been packing and moving for 4 weeks now…
Our friend could be considered a border-line hoarder. But she hoards good stuff, rather than garbage like some of those poor people on Hoarders (A&E TV Show). Just like us she had to move and was already dealing with enough stress in her life. She asked us if we would help out. So she took what she wanted to keep and left the rest for us to sell.
The sale was a huge amount of work and involved several long drives. Her house was out in Gresham, and even from our old house on 102nd in Portland, it was a 35 minute drive each way. It took us 4 days (a few hours every day after work) to get the house completely setup for the sale. The biggest task was discovering and sorting what was there. We setup the master bedroom as a huge clothing boutique. Racks and racks of clothing and a large assortment of designer and designer knock off bags.
The sale ran for two days, Saturday and Sunday from 8:00am to 4:00pm both days. The first day we were awash in nonstop people. The second day it was fairly slow but a few big repeat customers came back to help clear us out. In the end, we sold most of the items and got a nice little commission check.
In the run up to the sale, we had an adoption update. We said no to two boys, as after reading their expanded profile, we just didn’t feel we were a good match for their needs. This was much more emotional than we thought it would be. Our “No, thank you” came at very early stage. They were not close to even offering a placement. But that didn’t stop it from feeling like we were saying no to our only chance at the adoption process. It isn’t of course, but it was an unexpected stressor, in a sea of home moving stress.
Our moving day was planned for Black Friday, November 27th, just five days after the estate sale. So we spent most of Thanksgiving Day taking apart furniture, and loading boxes in to the garage. Anthony cooked up a nice mini thanksgiving dinner. Turkey (loaf), mashed potatoes, candied yams, fresh rolls, homemade stuffing, and two wonderful pumpkin pies.
Moving day started at 7:00am with the drive to the U-Haul for truck pickup. We got the 17 footer. Imagine Anthony driving a massive truck…. Yeah it was pretty funny. In the end it only took us 3 loads to get everything moved.
We moved from Portland to Happy Valley. We are still on the MAX line, green now rather than blue. The elementary school in our area just got a great report card so our future kido’s school is an upgrade from the old one, which did not score so well.
Our new house is larger, but smaller. The living room, dining room and kitchen are all in one huge open space on the main level along with a half bath. Gas stove, Gas heat and Gas hot water! Upstairs, we have 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and a nice sized laundry/cat room).
Our new master bedroom is huge, about 3 times bigger then what we had. It has its own master bath and huge walk in closet. We immediately splurged on a fancy new rain shower head for our shower. This was worth every penny. We keep taking longer and longer showers. It was a real god sent for our aching muscles! (Getting out of the shower has become an issue.)
The big change is this is a townhouse. No yard work to worry about, but no raspberries growing the backyard. All of our old neighbors are upset to see us leave, while our new neighbors seem upset to see us take up a parking space. In fact the day before we moved Joshua had to ring the door bell of almost all the other homes to get someone’s car out of our driveway so we could get to our garage.
The move is over and we are 100% in our new place now. Handed over the keys last night and our old landlord was shocked how clean the house was (She gave us 100% of our deposit back!).
So for now we are living a sea of boxes, but hopefully in the next week or so everything will find a new place in time for our Christmas party.