Oh, There You Are

So when you pack, you're always trying to find all the pieces of something, or all related items, etc., so you can put them in the same box and put on a nice label: Hair Accessories; Little People (the Fisher Price kind!); Napkins.

Then, 15 minutes later, a related item makes an appearance. What! Another hair tie? Where were you 15 minutes ago??

Now, you have a hair tie. But the Hair Accessories box is already sealed, taped, done. You could untape it, put the hair tie in, and retape it... but that seems like too much work for one hair tie. So you put the hair tie in a remotely-related box - Bathroom. You seal up Bathroom and... an hour later... a headband shows up. What! Where WERE you for the last hour and fifteen minutes??

But the latecomer needs to get packed, too. Do you start a box for random items? Do you start a new box for Hair Accessories? Do you just give up and start packing everything in one big mess? Now you're going to have hair accessories in THREE boxes. Gah!

This is the worst part of packing.

Last Weekend

It's our last weekend in the condo. And it's starting to look less and less like my home and more like one of the houses I see on Hoarders. There are boxes from floor to ceiling, the kids' toys are strewn about in between piles of packing materials, and we can't use our kitchen table. I ate my dinner off of a box while sitting on the couch.

My baby finds boxes to be the best!toys!ever! and pushes them, opens them, inspects them, carries them... all over the condo. This keeps him occupied while I try to pack (or make dinner, since I'm trying to use as much food up as possible from our freezer). This evening, however, he thought it would be a good idea to unpack one of my half-packed boxes. Fortunately it was just dry food, and once he had completely unpacked it, he decided that linguini in a box was now the best!toy!ever! and proceeded to drag it around the kitchen for five minutes. I was able to repack the box while he did this (less the linguini).

The really interesting thing about packing is finding out what tiny percentage of your items you actually use on a regular basis. For us, it is frightening that we packed an entire storage unit full of items at the end of February and have missed only 3 things:

-my shorts (all of them)
-some special t-shirts
-the baby's 12-month outfits (I thought we'd be moved in before he turned one)

Then we get into the last month before the move, and I'm packing everything that I think I won't need in the next month. I do a few bags of clothes and boxes of crap and think, "I'm doing pretty good." Flash forward to present and I have yet to wear or use about 80% of the remaining items. Fortunately, now we're into the last week, and I'm capable of discerning what we'll use in a week. I think. Especially now that I've come to the realization that I won't be making that pudding pie or mailing any thank you notes that got lost in the shuffle during January.

In summary:
-babies love boxes more than toys
-I own too much stuff
-Thank you for the Christmas present.

Let's Sign Stuff!

The good news is in! We're going to have a sale! Only one last hurdle to clear, and that's making sure our buyer gets approved for financing. In this day and age, that's no sure thing. We just spent the last month going back and forth with our mortgage company to prove we can pay a mortgage payment less than the one we've been paying for the last 5 years. First they asked for a brief work and salary history, then they asked for a line item detail with backup paperwork of every deposit in our bank account for the last 6 months, then they asked for our firstborn as collateral... you know, normal stuff.

But this week, we get to sign stuff! Stuff being the purchase and sale ("P&S" if you will). We're aiming for an end-of-July close still, but given the track record of this whole thing, I'm thinking we'll finally be done in August. But hey, that's a Mega Win over going back on the market.

In the middle of the day, I randomly exclaimed, "I GET TO PACK THINGS NOW!" Time to go beserk with the boxes and the tape. Yes! Yes! Yes!