So we recently moved across country to California.   Allie has been here for a month, me for about 3 weeks.  It’s been a difficult experience….the whole process from the packing, the house prep for rental, the physical act of getting across the country, the move-in, unpacking, and downsizing.   But it’s healthy, it kind of feels like a cleanse.  It’s not over;  we’re still deep in the process of trying to rummage through our belongings and make the house feel like home.

We offloaded quite a few things when we left VA, but even so, I pretty much maxed out my weight allowance with the moving company.   We filled almost the entire trailer truck, and for a while during the load out, we weren’t sure it was all going to fit.  The whole thing made me feel heavy, weighed down, cumbersome.

Our new place has less than half the square footage of our last house, and very little for excess storage.  It doesn’t allow for keeping a lot of “extra” things tucked away.  We will have to be very selective and pragmatic in what we decide to keep.

To ease the transition, we rented a storage unit a few miles away – the largest one available – that we can stash things in temporarily.  Our intent is not to keep this, but to use this as a temporary holding area for things until we can either condense or get rid of them.  It is already full.

The ideal endstate is that we have an organized home, where everything in it is deliberate and purposeful.  The things that are at an arms reach are only those things that we use on a regular basis.   I’d like to have no storage unit…but that may not be feasible.  At a minimum we need move into a smaller one.

I’ve had a lot of time off work recently, but it has still been very busy.  My goals has been to make progress every day, and ultimately to have our house in its steady state condition by 01 Aug.  Very achievable, but will require discipline and effort.   I start classes on the 5th of July, so time available will decrease here very soon.