We're Out

Similar to a prior post (We're In), this post serves as another major milestone, marking when we got the last of our things out of what we have been calling "existing house" and leaving it for the last time. I posted about moving the garage to the ToolShed (see Shop to ToolShed) and about moving the vehicles (See 4-Wheeled Friends...), so I'll skip that here. Those significant steps completed while the things below were happening. The first 2 pictures dramatically depict the significance of what has been resolved with the current state at the top and those same 2 rooms after we had them 90% empty only to receive a 1-bedroom apartment's worth of belongings.  

Moving Flotsam

living and dining ready

The end of a move can be incredibly elusive. You move the big things, and the boxed things and think you're practically done. Then, there are all the things you had not boxed for various reasons. That stuff ends up taking 80% of the time. At least, that's the way it's always been for me, but that could be because I don't buy, like, 100 boxes and box everything up ahead of time. We box and move the critical, or the rarely used, leaving everything else to be solved in a subsequent pass. In our case, our level of flotsam was increased by the influx of all of my parents' stuff and my siblings taking so little of it (no judging, of course. Is what is). Regardless of how it appears, it takes forever to get it all moved. Of course "moved" does not mean "relocated" in that we have stacks of things that need resolution in NewOldHouse. It doesn't matter. It is no longer at the other (once called existing) house so we are taking the win.

Clutter Peak 

Overall, we donated at least 5 pickup truck loads to GoodWill. 2 truck loads went to family friends and our sectional couch was taken by niece J and significant other C down to LeisureLand in the coast range west of Eugene. We recycled a considerable amount of paper, plastic and glass, leveraging containers at both houses and still occasionally having piles next to the bins on garbage / recycling day. Another 2 or 3 pickup truck loads of larger items were moved to the back of NewOldHouse to eventually route to metal recycling or the waste processing center.

NewOld Attic

One thing this new place has that our old house didn't is a real attic. The old house had small cubby-style attic crawl accesses where small things like banker-boxes could be stored, but they were spread around the upstairs, preventing central organized storage. NewOldHouse has an attic that runs the width of the house. It is not very tall (I have smacked my head multiple times), nor fully floored, however. Still, we can store things up there. In an earlier post, I mentioned that all of the sporting goods, like camping gear and ski/snow stuff went up into the attic. In truth, almost everything which used to line the wall next to Oliver ended up in the attic as well as some of the things from the ShedRoom which hadn't found another home. Even with all that has been moved up there, we have considerable space remaining. We don't intend to fill it, of course, but better to have the space and not use it than the alternative.

Big Pile of Shame

Pile of Shame

In the end, there seems to always be a big pile of stuff that is moved near the end which doesn't have a clear destination. Or, lack of time forces an additional level of chaos leading to the pile. In all of my moves, one or both have happened, and I think in each case the pile has had different stuff but the Pile of Shame has appeared in the same place every time: the garage. "But wait," you say. "Isn't NewOldHouse garage already full of new-to-you kitchen cabinets?" Yes, it is. So, our pile of shame is on top of those cabinets in one of the least attractive, least manageable piles of any of my moves. It includes things like the white metal rack which used to hold laundry supplies, some building materials, some cleansers, yard chemicals, a traffic cone? Yeah, the picture really tells the story, complete with a shelving unit all catawampus. Not my best work.

If this move were like my prior ones, this pile would be among the last things solved for. Since it is the most significant eye-sore that we get to walk past every day, this move is different. In truth, between the time I started writing this post, and it's completion, the mess has been mostly resolved. It needed to be early in the organizing process because it was preventing the kitchen cabinets from being installed, and we cannot live with the camping-kitchen indefinitely. I felt that we could not in-earnest return to the kitchen work until this was solved. I organized some of the pile of shame up into garage shelving, sorting the rest into logical places (garden chemicals to the garden shed, eg).

Repair, Clean and Paint

closet repaired

Once the last of our things were moved, the house had to be readied for whoever lives there next. While I completed the evacuation of our stuff, Boo focused on painting, starting with the first floor baseboards. Then, she re-painted all 3 bathrooms, the master bedroom, another bedroom and the front door. I cut-in one of the rooms and did the super-high work in the entry, but she did everything else. Meanwhile, our friends Lana and John completed the closet repairs in the upstairs hallway closet, started and abandoned by the mess-making handy-person I mentioned in the garage lament in Shop to ToolShed. For background, Boo and I had done the demo to install a stackable washer/drier in the hallway prior to the NewOldHouse saga starting. Walls were gone so we needed to enclose things again. With the painting completed, the closet complete and our stuff out, we set to cleaning the place.

We figured that we could save some house-cleaner money if we did some of the more time-consuming things. This list started with dusting the walls, mopping the hardwood and cleaning windows. Before we knew it, Boo had cleaned the bathrooms (down to disassembly/re-assembly of the shower doors), the kitchen (cupboards, fridge and oven too) and the hot tub. We contracted out shampooing the carpets, but Boo did an incredibly thorough job. Last, there is considerable concrete around that house, from the long driveway (flag lot) to the back patio, the opportunity for moss to grow in western Oregon is significant. So, John, Lana and I power-washed the patio and the worst of the driveway.

Reflections

ShedRoom ready

With the house in the best possible shape we could have made it, we handed the keys over to a rental management company. This has been a very long slog. We were not ready nor really thinking about moving when NewOldHouse came to us. I imagine most folks who consider a move do some elimination of things they are not moving prior to the start of the actual move. We had the inverse happen: a 1 bedroom apartment's worth of stuff arrived maybe a month after we started that "elimination of things" and months after the move was decided.

I don't think the emotional impact of leaving a place we called home for 6 years has really hit us yet. When we started to move in, we had 4 sons and a niece moving with us but our family shape seemed to change every 6 months. By the time our things moved, son K had decided to live with his girlfriend instead, so we were already in flux. By the end of that first Summer, our niece had returned to Montana. Shortly after that, C decided to live with his mom full-time and did so for 2-1/2 years before returning at the end of the 2018 school year and then stayed with us until Fall 2022 when he retuned to his mom's to attend Portland State. In the middle of that, T continued to bounce between homes, staying with us increasingly. Then, he went to University of Nevada, Reno for a year and returned to stay with us full-time for a year before heading to Eugene and then LA. Barely missing an overlap with C, K2 shifted to living with his father full-time at the end of the Summer of 2019. That's a lot of moving pieces, and the amount of overlap between them was very light. After that first summer, we rarely had more than 2 kids with us at any time.

master complete

Boo and I had moved into that house to create a stable home for our 4 boys where they could really become brothers. We didn't achieve that goal; there were too many changes of who was there for large periods, and even at the week-to-week level, we lacked fixed periods together as all of them would do short periods at their other parent's house. Boo's ex-husband was very supportive of our create-brotherhood effort as he also recognized the gift of 2 brothers to his sons. He was quite flexible to accommodate days/nights/weekends/holidays to allow for more overlapping time with all 4 boys. Unfortunately, my ex-wife only saw our brother-building effort as some kind of a threat to her. She had and has an all-too-common misbelief that love, joy, happiness and contentment are all constrained resources to be horded for one's self, and thwarted for others. So, she actively undermined our efforts both in words and in actions. She would purposefully schedule things that would force the kids apart, and was completely unwilling to shift things unless we sacrificed additional days/nights/weekends/holidays for the favor. It is unfortunate she was unable to rise above the petty for the benefit of our children, but that's just who she was. Perhaps she has since grown.

One might think that leaving a place where our boys lived their last years together would be difficult. Honestly, we are leaving a constant reminder that we failed to create that nurturing space for them, but not from a lack of trying. Today, their relationships span from strained to non-existent. So, we have a sadness, but not for what was, rather for what we could not manifest.

As winter tries to turn into spring (we had snow flurries on the morning of 3-April), Boo and I both remain positive that the NewOldHouse is and will be a great place for the 2 of us. Going forward, our attention will be split between (a) getting the random stacks resolved and (b) the demo and construction of the kitchen. Of course, I have some cars which need attention as well, and I expect I will get some time very soon.

Thanks, as always, for following along. This move has been an incredible, and unexpected, journey. I hope to be returning to more typical activities (and blog topics) very soon-