Ready, Set, GO!

We are embarking on a new and exciting life adventure! Completely stepping out of our comfort zones, leaving our families, and moving almost 3,000 miles from where we live now. Several weeks ago my husband accepted a job on the east coast. If everything goes according to “the plan” we will be moving from Washington state and living in New Hampshire within a few months. My husband grew up in a military family and has lived in quite a few places over his lifetime. I lived briefly in Montana and Wyoming when I was younger, and have lived in Washington State for the majority of my life. We are so excited to see and do new things! Not that we won’t miss our “comfort zone”, I’m sure that will be hard. But the opportunity to move somewhere completely different from what we’re used to, meet new friends, enjoy the area…that’s exciting! Nerve wracking too, but that’s to be expected.

It’s 2,810 miles from our home in Washington to the area we are going to live in New Hampshire. Basically, we’re moving from one corner of the United States to another.

Our adventure kicked into high gear last Friday when we met with a Realtor. Up to now, this whole thing felt a little surreal. Today, we are in full motion. I’ve been sorting, deep cleaning, organizing and luckily there’s only a few little things we had to do to the house. The Realtor wanted me to dress it up by setting our table with flowers, wine glasses, and fancy settings. Evidently it’s called “staging”. Did you know you can hire professional Stagers? What a fun job that would be!  Smidge, you would be perfect for a job like that and you could make millions!

I removed all the family photos (insert sad face here), we replaced a strip of carpet that leads downstairs to our unfinished basement, moved some furniture around, and we need to turn every light in the house on when we know they are coming for a look-see.

Bare walls where about 50 family photos used to hang.

We also have to hide the dog crates and the cat accessories. Evidently a huge percentage of people who are looking for a new home think they are allergic to pets, but they aren’t. Those are the Realtor’s words, not mine. I’m kind of clean freak, so it won’t be too difficult to keep the house pet free…except for the pets! We have to collapse the pet crates and cram them under the bed every time they show the house. They’re huge. Wednesday it took me a half an hour to hide everything before the photographer arrived. You wouldn’t think something so simply constructed would be such a pain to maneuver! I can’t complain too much though. It’s a small price to pay if we want the house in tip-top shape and to appeal to all types of buyers.

Trust me, they look simple but it’s a huge task. I was sweating when I was done wrestling with them. Guess this will turn into my new workout if we’re lucky enough to get a lot of viewings over the next couple of months.

With my husband working, I’m pretty much on my own when it comes to figuring out how I’m going to get everyone out of the house for showings. Needless to say, I will have to be more organized than usual. I’ve come up with a cleaning plan every night before bed to make things less hectic if we have to scoot out of here early the next day. Who knew so much went into the whole process? I see a busy and crazy future ahead of me for a while…

Natural cleaning products have become my new best friend. Have you tried this brand? I love them, they smell so good! They all smell great but my personal favorite is the furniture spray. It’s smells just like the cherry and almond smell of Jergen’s lotion my grandma used to wear.

Seth, the Realtor, gave us lots of compliments on the house and its decor, said it would photograph very well and then told us that he just sold a house right down the street from us……..in EIGHT days. So he didn’t see any problem in getting it sold. Um, eight days? I looked at him and said, “Holy cow, I don’t know if I can do 8 days.”  We haven’t even found a house in New Hampshire. We know the basic “area” we’d like to live, but other than that, nada. Luckily Seth has “connections” and has set us up with a Realtor in New Hampshire. Soon the emails will begin rolling in and we can start weeding through properties. That’s when the fun and excitement begins!

If you know me, you know that I like a plan. I like a step by step plan on how life is going to go and how we’re going to deal with it… Ha! Funny, right? I might like things that way, but I cannot remember one time when it actually turned out like that. I’m learning to take a lot of deep breaths. And use a couple of drops of these every now and then. They’re homeopathic calming drops. Just enough to take the edge off of an overly exciting day. All natural goodness for your body.

I’ve also been snacking on these amazing vanilla meringues lately and squeezing in breaks to read and relax. The meringues come from Trader Joe’s and are to die for. If you haven’t tried them, you must! And go quickly, because I think they are a “featured” product which means they won’t always carry them. Be careful. They’re addictive.

When you commit to something this huge, you just have to roll with the punches. It will be crazy, but we’ll consider ourselves lucky if the house sells quickly in this market. And if it takes months to sell, then we’ll regroup and deal with that too!

We’ve lived in this house for 12 years, the longest we’ve ever lived in one home. Luckily, I’m not a hoarder and I’m very organized. However, even though I’m not a “stuff” keeper and like to have everything in its place, I was still able to come up with several bags of things for The Salvation Army. It’s funny what we keep around thinking that it will be used, only to have completely forgotten that we even kept it!  Everything is in its place so that when the movers come, things will be delivered to New Hampshire hopefully without the chaos of having to search through boxes for our bare necessities. That may be wishful thinking. We’ll see.

So for now, it’s still a bit of “hurry up and wait”. But that’s OK, because once the house sells, things will go very, very, fast. We’re going to try to squeeze in a nice camping trip with the in-laws next week and now that our weather is clearing up, we’ll plan for as many lazy Saturday evenings as we can in the backyard with delicious snacks and cocktails. I have to admit, we love our yard and we will miss it. We’ve tried very hard to make it a relaxing and beautiful area where we can “hang out”. Hopefully the next folks will enjoy it as much as we have!

Then, when the time comes, we’ll pack up our trailer and go on an adventure TO our adventure as we travel across the country to our new home. Google Maps tells me that it will take us 46 hours to drive there. But luckily, we will be taking our time and soaking in the country on our way and will meander, enjoying every bit of scenery on the way to our new home. I’ve never traveled past Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado. There’s a lot of country I’m excited to see on the way to New Hampshire!

Did I tell you I’m planning on taking you with me? Stay tuned, I promise, it will be an exciting summer!