Moved, all the way!

A week after we got the keys to our new house, we have finally cleared the old house. We pulled out of the driveway for the last time at 4 pm and went to turn in our keys. Now it's on them to either do the right thing by us, or completely screw us senseless, but whatever it is, it's out of our hands.

We did most everything they asked for, but every single thing we could. The only thing we didn't get around to was the oven. Oh well. They may dock us $100 or so for that, but there just wasn't time, and honestly, the rest of the house is freaking amazing looking. It really does look brand new, which is amazing considering it was built in 1970-something. Thak was there until 1 am last night scrubbing tile grout. That was the last thing that had to be done. This morning, we went and hauled one last load of stuff to the dump, one to the recycling center on post, and two more of stuff to the new house. (We'll let you in on a little secret. A 2 car garage holds a lot of stuff, more than you can imagine until you have to move it all.) Then that was that, and we were done. It's out of our hands now. We did our best. We are hoping to get back at least $1000 of our security deposit. When you consider how much we paid, and that we left the house pretty much exactly the way we found it, that is very realistic.

Now the real work begins. We have to unpack all this stuff. All my careful deliberate packing was limited to the boxes I packed BEFORE we got the keys to this place. Everything else is more or less thrown into boxes in a big state of mayhem by Thak, Erin, Orren, and true friends who actually showed up to help us, which was awesome of them. It's going to be very interesting unpacking all that stuff, but we'll get it done.

I think we're going to have one major epic yard sale in the very near future. We got rid of a TON of stuff in the move (2 truck loads to the dump, 1 truck load to recycling, and 1 truck load to Goodwill, so in total, 4 truck loads of stuff we got rid of) but there is more that we won't need, or that won't find a place in this house, and since we're sticking around here for a while, there is no sense in hanging onto things that don't work for this house. We no longer live by the Active Duty adage "Never get rid of window treatments" because this house needs what it needs, and that's that for us for the next 5 years. We also no longer have the Active Duty convenience of people to move our junk for us when we do decide to leave this place.

I think stuff-wise, this move was a major lesson for us. There was stuff in that garage still in its boxes from Ft. Stewart, and not even the most recent house we lived in there either. That stuff either got donated (if it was good) or thrown away (if it was not in usable condition). If we haven't used it in this many years, obviously we don't need it. In the military, it's almost encouraged to accumulate junk. Post housing units have so much storage that people can just amass things. Once you get to be about Thak's rank, the moving weight allowances get to be insanely huge, such that unless you have a ton of kids, you really don't have to thin down your hoarding at all for the Army to move you, no questions asked. This time, having to move ourselves, and seeing just how much crap we had, it was kind of insane, to be honest. Me and Thak both agree that we're never letting it get to this point again. There is just no reason for it.

The new house is awesome. Erin's room is drastically smaller than her old room, but honestly, with her, that just means less space to trash, so it's not a bad thing. It's also good that her room is no longer right beside Orren and the baby's room, because she can't just jump next door and trash their room like she did in the old house. Basically, the biggest problem we had in the old house was Erin more or less having three rooms to completely trash (her room, Orren's room, and the playroom). That was the hardest thing to keep up with. Now that Erin only has one room to trash, and it's the smallest room in the house, it will probably be easier to stay on top of. (And if even one person says, "Well, teach her not to trash her room!" I will put my foot up their ass. Have you ever met Erin?!! Let's just say.... I've tried.)

Orren and the baby's room is, amazingly, the perfect size and shape! We got the bed, the dresser, the crib/changing table, and the rocking chair and ottoman to fit in there pretty much like puzzle pieces. While the baby is still young, he/she and Orren will share one dresser. When he/she gets to be preschool age, we'll ditch the crib (which turns into a toddler bed) in favor of bunk beds and put a second dresser where the crib is now. It'll all work out great.

I just got an ingenious idea for the kids' bathroom yesterday while at the old house, watching Orren play with a toilet plunger in the garage. (Yeah, what of it? Everyone's done it before!) I want to keep the monkey theme and the bright blue and green color scheme for their bathroom, but I want to letter the Shel Silverstein poem "Hat" on the wall, along with the illustration that appears with it in the book. (The poem goes, "Teddy said it was a hat, so I put it on. Now dad is saying, "Where the heck's the toilet plunger gone?") If you know my kids, you know this poem totally fits them. Plus, who doesn't love Shel Silverstein?? Oh, and I'd be willing to bet not a lot of people have "Hat" immortalized on their bathroom walls. Writing on the walls is very trendy these days, but most people stick to cliche things like "Live, Laugh, Love". Not a lot venture into rhymes about wearing a toilet plunger on your head. Well, I, for one, am going there!

Me and Thak's room is outstanding. It's one of the biggest rooms in the house for sure, and our closet is the size of Erin's bedroom in our on-post house at Ft. Stewart. It's pretty great. Thak proposed we paint it blue. I told him he was crazy. No decisions on what we're going to do with it yet, but blue walls are definitely not in our future. We have to think about this one more.

Our great room also presents its own set of decorating challenges, but it will come together. Right now, I've done well by just having Thak leave most of the old furniture in the garage. The couch, chair, coffee table, and dining room set can stay. Everything else, I'm trying it piece by piece, but honestly, I want a far nicer bookcase than what we have had, and I'm not sure what else. It was funny, when he asked me where I wanted our big bookcase when we were moving stuff into here, and I said "On the driveway with a price tag on it." Everyone laughed. In actuality, it's in the garage. I don't see bringing it in here, though. I don't like it with this house.

The yard is going to be fun and interesting. We're going to get landscape timbers and make the raised bed for a garden, maybe tomorrow. We'll try to get the dirt to fill it kind of on the cheap. Sometimes you can find topsoil for free on Craigslist. We'll be calling around. We also have to build a new clothesline since the one we had would not come out of the ground, and therefore, stayed at the old house. (Hopefully they see it as a bonus, and not a blemish!) Also of immediate importance is to seed the backyard in grass. That, we'll probably do tomorrow. It just needs to happen so the kids can play out there better. Right now, our entire lot is dirt, which is both good and bad. It's bad because, well, we live on a fricking dirt lot. It's good because we can do literally anything with it, with relative ease, compared to if there were existing landscaping and we wanted to change it. It's a blank canvas, which is honestly pretty cool.

So that's about it. We're moved. We still have about five tons of work to do, but we're closer than we were yesterday.