Hello from the new Chez Mousie! We’re slowly digging ourselves out from under the mass of boxes and getting the new place set up for the upcoming holidays. The move went rather less smoothly than anticipated (and after all of the moves I’ve been through, I assure you that I didn’t anticipate a problem free relocation) due to miserable weather (heavy rain & cold wind), lack of the proper sized moving truck (stupid stupid rental truck company!!), and the fact that most of our moving help (scheduled up long in advance) bailed out on us at the last minute.
Munchkin left his old school on Friday and started his new school last Monday – he’s slowly adjusting to his new schedule & teacher. He’s taking being “the new kid” pretty rough.. but we’re trying to work through it. I’m sure the poor kid would be doing better if he had tv- its still not on after almost 2 weeks. I had thought ahead and scheduled up our satellite tv installation for the Monday after we moved into the house only to find out that we can’t GET satellite tv here because of the trees surrounding the house. *sigh* Even though I lived without tv for years while we moved around the US, I have to admit that even I’m starting to have tv withdrawal symptoms. Being without tv and internet did do wonders for me being productive and festive.. behold :
This is the living room of the new house.. complete with a 7 foot fake Xmoose tree. You can’t see it well from the photo but the lights on the tree are two shades of blue and an awesome set of dark purple from Halloween – the rest of the tree is decorated with various toy ornaments and sparkly things from Target. I love our living room.. its my favorite room of the house.
I’m actually really happy with our new house and I was very pleasantly surprised when we got all of our furniture into it with room to spare. I’m currently typing this post from MY OWN ROOM!!! I am very happy to have an office/studio/whatever where I can store all of my yarn & crafty things so that the rest of the house isn’t a disaster. My husband also has his own office (a huge room which is actually a converted garage) which is excellent because he works from home and has tons of stuff. Munchkin has a really nice sized room with a huge closet and lots of floor space for playing with his pirate ships & legos. We’ve also got two bathrooms (including a master suite), a master bedroom, eat in kitchen (painted the most awesome shade of green..) and huge yard with a wrap around deck, wooden fence, and a large storage house.
Without a doubt the best thing about the house is THIS:
I can’t even tell you how happy having heat makes me after spending a year & a half living with space heaters and freezing our asses off. One of the worst things about living in the other house was worrying about whether Munchkin was going to be warm enough at night and hearing how upset he was that he had to come home to a cold house every day. Its clearly obvious from the drastic improvement in our health that the old house (which was also apparently growing toxic black mold) was very literally making us all sick. I’m so thrilled to be out of there!!
Members of the family are reacting to the new addition of central heat like this :
ahhhhh…. (because really.. that face says it all!)
I wanted to thank everyone for the good vibes they sent our way because we found a new home! We will be moving to a new city and Munchkin will have to start a new school but we’ve found a house that seems like its going to be a good match for us. It’s smaller than our current home but it is in good condition, has HEAT, a nice deck & small fenced yard, accepts pets, is close to the new school, has 3 small bedrooms (no more desk in the living room!) + a large converted garage room which will be perfect for my husband’s home office. The house is also closer to friends & family and cuts serious mileage off of my husband’s travel time when he does work on location for his business.
The search for a new Mouse House was definitely stressful and we did have to give up ‘extras’ such as a fireplace & a more rural setting because there was nothing available like that in our price range. Our new neighborhood is a family friendly established (aka: older houses) sub-division which is very close to a shopping area with tons of great stores & restaurants– something totally different from the other places we’ve lived. I’m both nervous and excited to be moving to a new location.. and Munchkin is excited to make new friends in his new school and in our neighborhood.
In the last few days (we went to see the house on Saturday) I’ve already sent SEVEN trash bags of clothes, toys & household items to the Goodwill & my husband has filled our giant trash bin to the brim. I’m usually a serious pack(mouse) but knowing that we’re moving to a totally different environment has sort of prompted us to do a heavy duty clean-out… I think we’re all ready for a change and opening up space in our closets & cabinets is just one way of welcoming the prospect of new and better things into our lives.
Our current situation has prompted a lot of plans for change & shifts in ways of thinking. I’ve noticed that thinking about the new house as “cozy” is a much more positive way of dealing with the fact that yes, we’re losing a whole bunch of square footage in this move – AGAIN. In reality, its not a problem with the house, its a problem with the fact that we have more shit than 3 people reasonably should own. Thinking again in matters of perception, I’ve also decided that I’m boycotting the words “throw out”, ” get rid of”, and “chuck” in favor of the word “edit” in regards to what I’m doing with my STUFF. The idea of “editing” is much more suggestive of making things better and keeping only the best and most useful of items while letting the others go.
We have to be out of here before Thanksgiving and our big move is ‘scheduled’ for the weekend of the 20′th, so I’m not entirely sure how much I’m going to be online from now until then. Judging from last move, we could be without internet & tv for a few days… but I’m going to hope for the best.
1. Avada Kedavra Sock, 2. “dining room”- before 3. “dining room”- after
I know.. I know.. “holy shit.. KNITTING? On Mouse’s knitting blog? No way!” yes, way. I’ve been chugging along at night on the Killing Curse socks and have turned the heel on sock #1 while watching obscene amounts of CSI:Miami. I also found a “new way” (new to me anyway..) of doing a hole free short row heel which can be found here and is WAY easier than my previous method which was rather hit or miss. The pain in my hand from knitting is mild as long as I don’t knit for hours at a time.. so I’m trying to monitor my time and fly under the radar on that one. While I do miss knitting constantly I do NOT want to injure my hand/wrist anymore and risk further and more serious damage.. so I’m taking it one project at a time.
The photos on the right side are a before and after of my (useless for its intended purposes – which makes me wonder what sort of idiot designed these houses) dining room. Our house is a split level and its the room you come into when you come up the steps from the front door – so the mess and the clutter made me sad every time I came home. This is also the room that connects every other room upstairs so I was constantly looking at the mess and wishing it would go away even though I had no idea where to start in fixing it – some messes are overwhelming like that. A few days ago I ended up pulling everything out, throwing most of the contents of the top of the large table in a cardboard box to be sorted later, moving all the things hiding UNDER the table into the garage, and bringing up a small card table in its place. The small table with two padded chairs (also hiding in other rooms taking up space) became a really nice place to do homework with Munchkin at night.
Fair amount of bitching and an overdose of the real life of Mousie and a fair amount of swearing under the cut.. (so if you read this on bloglines you can feel free to skip the rest of this post if you don’t want to hear it) Continue reading »
1. relief, 2. closet in progress
The photo on the left was taken earlier this morning and those trash bags are filled with clothes from my closet bound for charity. At the moment its up to 4 trash bags including one not pictured with clothing that went directly into the trash. The box at the front is now completely filled with shoes for donation. The photo on the right is my closet in the process of being organized – the clothing is hanging freely with moving room as opposed to its usual ‘crammed’ state. The floor is now empty except for a line of shoes and two small laundry baskets of stuff that didn’t get sorted because my back finally gave out on me.
The big deal about this being “eye candy” for me.. is that I’m very attached to my clothing and pretty much unwilling to part with any of it. People who know me joke that they would NEVER sign me up for something like TLC’s “What Not to Wear” because I’d probably try to off the hosts when they either tear up or try to throw away my clothing. I’m sentimental about my clothing, I’m also cheap and refuse to get rid of things that are still “perfectly good” even if I did purchase them at the thrift store’s 99 cent day. Now none of this would be a bad thing if the mess that is left from having all of these clothes (aka- nowhere to put it “away” or possible way of ‘storing’ all of it) didn’t make me stressed out – but seeing it all makes me crazy. I’ve tried to get rid of stuff in the past.. and succeeded in removing a few items here or there when they become unwearable but it was never enough to even put a dent in fixing the problem.
I’m sort of stunned that I had so much in my wardrobe that either didn’t actually fit anymore or was in such bad shape that I didn’t even consider it worthy of donating to charity and instead it went into a trash bag. I’ll be taking the bags of clothes to the thrift store tomorrow.. and I honestly can’t WAIT to be rid of it all. I actually walked into my closet ( a feat in itself) today and was looking through the hanging clothing and saw more things that I could part with – which is something I never find myself thinking. I’m hoping that its the motivation that I needed to jump start a huge house-wide purge of clutter. I’m also finally feeling like I could get this all under control soon, which makes me very happy.
