2 Days Left…

With only 2 days left before moving to the new homestead, we are packing and doing the final touches in preparation.  It is amazing that what started as a dump of a place is now probably one of my favorite places I have ever seen!  It is definitely my dream home and a perfect fit for our homestead lifestyle. 

In the beginning, when we showed people the old place, they had a very hard time envisioning a place that would be beautiful.  Mark and I certainly make a great dream team.  We can look at something that looks terrible and visualize what it could be.  It took imagination coupled with determination.   Now we are sitting on what we feel is the promised land.  God has supplied the grace, mercy, and strength that was needed to pull this together.

Box after box, the kids and I have been loading for the past few weeks.  There are tricks to moving effectively.  I have found that if you want things to go smoothly, you must have a system, as with all things!  It makes moving virtually stress free. 

Before we started packing 3 weeks ago, my husband said to me, “We have too much stuff!”  I thought about it for awhile because I think we have become minimalists in a lot of ways through the years of refining our lifestyle.  After many hours of thought, I had a really reasonable answer for him.  “We have a lot of extra stuff because we have lots of interests.”  He nodded his head in agreement.

We have the homesteading, canning, sewing, art, music, all of which require stuff!  Each thing has a long list of things that are needed.  Now that I finally made sense to that, we can try to find a place for all of it.  I can’t say that it will be easy, since this new place is a bit smaller, but we will try.

When packing the boxes, I try to organize all the things that belong together in a box, label it accordingly, and then keep all the like boxes in the same stack.  I keep all the necessary things for cooking, cleaning, and bathing set aside.  These are things that will get packed last.  I generally like to use red bins that are labeled accordingly.  I will have one for kitchen, one for bathroom, one for cleaning, and suitcases for the clothing needed in the next week or so.

That way, you are not scrambling around, diving into each and every box, looking for things that you need while you are in transition.  That is the key to offering a stress free transition while settling into your new home.  It works every time!  We have moved enough to fine tune our strategies on moving.

I will begin to show you my last run of photos taken at the stage of renovation we are in at the moment.  We will be adding all the bathroom fixtures and connecting all the plumbing today.  Things are really coming together.

In the past week, we were able to lay all the flooring in the first and second floors.  It looks stunning!  All plank style.

The girls room was dry walled because sadly, we ran out of wood.  We had enough to do the top of one of their walls, which is really quite pretty.  The floor is laid and soon we will do a spackled texture to the walls to keep with the older look and then we will paint it a color of their choice.  That is part of the fun for them. 

Today will be another full day and we are getting so excited for the move.  Things are really coming together, God has been with us every step of the way.  We are overjoyed to soon start working on our camp.  We will keep you posted every step of the way.  Thank you all for your encouraging words, we always treasure your feedback and prayers.