Top 5 Best and Worst Things About Moving

Greetings, TulsaKids fam! The past few weeks have been hecka fun, filled with fun family trips, Travis Meyer adulation, and talk of upcoming cons and our family’s favorite time of year, GISH (formerly known as GISHWHES, the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen).

It has been an amazing year for our family. I haven’t written much about this, but after years of struggling at below-living wages, our family has spent the past year climbing our way up from the hardest times we’ve ever had.

And the hundred little changes that happened this year for us finally brought us to a moment we’ve been needing for a long time: we’re moving across town to a bigger place!

When we first moved into our current home, we were pretty smitten. It’s a charming little 1930 bungalow south of Brookside with two bedrooms and a finished attic which functioned as a good-sized bedroom for two of the kids.

But four years later, we have three tweens, and charming means a tiny kitchen, non-existent dining room, and microbathroom, which are collectively killing us.

We call our band “Crowded House.”

As in someone is bound to do something that gets us featured on 60 Minutes if we don’t get some personal space stat. While can be fun to be able to wash your hands while sitting on the loo…LOL JK. That has never been fun.

But in just two days, we’ll be sleeping in a home with two bathrooms, an actual bona fide dining room, and a kitchen you can cook a meal in without the range having to double as a countertop, a necessity which may or may not have resulted in me setting fire to a box of cereal one blustery Sunday afternoon.

And just in case we started to second guess ourselves about the move, the house gave us one final push out the door when last week, with an earthquake-like impact, the massive elder tree in our front yard split in half, taking out our power to the house, a smaller tree, and the front fence.

It was almost a Tree-otine.

We heard you loud and clear, universe, so we’re taking this Nebula across town to resettle just a few minutes from our favorite pho place.

But before we get to establish our new gallery wall and referee our first fight over who is in whom’s space, we have to get there. And because moving is horrible and I process things through listing, for today’s post, I give you the five best and worst things about moving.

Five Best Things About Moving

1. The Forced KonMari-ing

Nothing forces you to take inventory of your possessions like piling them individually into boxes which you must then transport across town and eventually unpack. You find yourself questioning the sanity of hanging onto non-digitized media like VHS tapes, books, and even print photos (don’t hate…we’ve generated a lot of film in 22 years of marriage).

2. The License to Slack

As moving day approaches, most of your clothes, toiletries, and dishes are packed, which means you can let go of your guilt and live off of sandwiches and junk food served on disposable plates, re-wear the same two outfits, and slack on the old fortysomething beauty routine. All the toys are packed, too, so the kids can either play outside or zombie out on their tablets. It’s all fine because it’s temporary, right?

3. Clean House, Clean Slate

Once you’re well settled into a place, it can be tough to get it to the level of clean it was when you moved in without completely moving the furniture, clearing the walls, and really getting a good look at everything. But a new house is tabula rasa. You can finally bust out all of those glorious Pinterest organization pins you’ve been digitally hoarding. Who’s got two thumbs and a newfound enthusiasm for coffee mug organization? This mom.

4. New Ground Rules

I have to confess in our current home, we’ve made some boundary-related mistakes. As in, we haven’t really set any. That means kids are constantly crashing our personal space, each other’s space, and of course, our bedroom. A new house means we can get a fresh break from old space-related habits and we’ve got a chance to draw some firm lines and perhaps install some firm locks in our parental bedroom door.

5. More Space

We don’t have very much furniture right now. That’s because after we moved in here, we shuffled around what we had until we gradually began to realize there’s not very much room for all of our stuff and slowly started selling, donating, or rehoming it. The new house means we can finally have company over and everyone sits down on a piece of furniture that’s actually intended for sitting, unlike the coffee table I destroyed a few days ago when I learned it was not engineered to support the weight of an adult, much to my children’s delight.

Five Worst Things About Moving

1. The Forced KonMari-ing

Nothing forces you to pack with a sense of urgency like knowing there is only one week left until your move-out date. Although you find yourself taking inventory of your possessions like piling them individually into boxes which you must then transport across town and eventually unpack, you end up eventually indiscriminately throwing Zuck-knows-what into boxes to sort out later knowing full well you’re probably going to let most of them sit in the garage for a solid six weeks. You’ll have time to assess joy once your muscles have fully recovered.

2. The License to Slack

As moving day approaches, living without most of your clothes, toiletries, and dishes can begin to grate on the whole family. Invariably, you’ll end up needing to dress for some occasion you don’t have the right clothing for. Your child will need the allergy medication that’s buried in a mountain of boxes. You could never look at another PB&J and it would be too soon, and because all of the toys and books are put away, the kids are starting to grow into the furniture and driving each other and you up the wall.

3. Clean House, Clean Slate

Once you’re well settled into a new place, it can be tough to get it to the level of clean it was when you moved in without completely moving the furniture, clearing the walls, and really getting a good look at everything. But if you think you just get to move into the new place without paying the piper, it’s time to stop and smell the Scrubbing Bubbles.

We get to clean all that off the windows.

Once you move all of your things out of the old place, you get to clean it, and even if you’re a fantastic housekeeper, which we’re not, parts of it are covered in four years of dust. If you see me on the street, it’s not a new perfume. It’s Eau de Pine-Sol.

4. New Ground Rules

Because we’re aware that in our current home, we’ve made some boundary-related mistakes, there’s a lot of pressure not to repeat them. This means in the first couple of weeks when we’re exhausted and just want to Netflix through life until our aching backs are recovered, we’ll have to double down on establishing good space-related habits knowing full well that if we don’t, we’ll pay the price down the road.

5. More Space

We don’t have very much furniture right now, and that means we’ve got to invest in some furniture that’s actually intended to be sat on for when company comes over. But what we do have, we have to decide where to place. And let’s face it, furniture placement can be really hard.

I’ve got several boards pinned filled with ideas for furniture placement, but the furniture is all Urban Outfitters chic. I’ve read about farmhouse chic and boho chic, but I can’t find anything on working class struggle chic. I need a home decor site where all the furniture looks like it was shuffled out of the prop room where the sets of Roseanne and Married…With Children go to die because that’s what we’re working with.

I’ll call it Destroyed Post-Maximalism. Look for my coffee table book at a store near you in time for Christmas.

If anyone knows of a home design that deals exclusively with furniture that’s got marker stains and cat scratches on it, let me know in the comments. Thanks for reading, and have a beautiful week!