We know more now!

Our moving date is March 26. We met with our builder today and he said the house will be ready for us to move into then. YES! That gives us five whole days to get this house inspection ready for the world's most draconian seeming landlord. Outstanding! Five days is like 100 years in Army moving time. We can do this no problem!

So basically, today I did get Thak to go with me to the recycling center on post and pick up a bunch of boxes. We got a whole lot of them, probably not totally as many as we will need for the whole house, but a great start. We can always go back to the recycling center another day and pick up more when we run out of these. So far, I've gotten all the books, DVD's, decorative items, pictures, and non-essential clothes packed up. I've left us each a minimal selection of stuff to wear, and packed the rest. Not only does this cut down on packing later on, it cuts down on laundry. That's a good byproduct!

This house looks SO empty without anything on the walls, and boxes everywhere, but it's moving in the right direction. My aim is to kind of do a top-down approach to it. As soon as I've got as much stuff as possible packed, and put into places that aren't blocking anything in pressing need of cleaning, I'll do fan blades, and rafters, and high up AC vents, and light fixtures. Then I'll get all the crayon marks off the walls. Go-Jo hand cleaner is about the only thing that does a sufficient job at that, so thank goodness we have a ton of it!

We still have to get the blinds to replace the ones in the kids' rooms, and Thak says there's a set of them out here in the living room that need to be replaced, too, but they all look fine to me. On Monday, I can call around and find a carpet cleaning service that isn't outlandishly expensive, and see if they clean grout and microfiber couches as well. (The grout is necessary for move out. The microfiber is because I want my couches to look nice again.) and make an appointment for hopefully the 27th.

Hopefully by the end of the week, I'll have enough of the hard stuff in the house done that I can get the yard good. I'm going to have to get Thak to take the clothesline down, which is going to be interesting. I'm also going to have to get him to do the garage, which again, will be interesting. He also needs to take out our dishwasher, and reinstall the broken one the landlords issued us. Again, this will be interesting. Thank goodness he goes on terminal leave next week, and doesn't start his internship for another two weeks or so after that. No, we didn't plan for there to be this lapse, but that's the way it worked out, and with this move coming, I think it's probably a good thing.

If it becomes too frazzling, at least Erin is on Spring Break this week, and with Thak's last day of Active Duty being Tuesday, there is definitely the chance that we could take Thursday and Friday and run away to New Mexico just to catch a break!! With the week we're about to have, it may be necessary.