The Two Houses

Having two houses and the time to transition was all fun and games – until it wasn’t. It was wonderful to have a week to work in the new house and get it ready for us to move in. It was less wonderful to continue to deal with the remnants and responsibilities in the old house once we transitioned our lives to the new neighborhood.

For the final week of school, every morning, Mike, the kids, and I schlepped ourselves over to the old house so the kids could catch the bus. Because real truth, I was not adding “change the bus stop for a week” to my to-do list. [Fun fact: writing this reminded me that I need to call the school so that we are assigned to the right bus stop in the fall. Yikes!] Once they were off to school, we typically loaded a random assortment of things into our cars, toted it over to the new house, unloaded, and then went about our actual jobs for the day.

Then every night, usually around 9pm after all evening activities had ended and the kids were tucked in, one or the other of us would head back to the old house to continue packing, patching and painting, mowing, or cleaning. It.was.exhausting. And truly felt like we had no time to spend settling into the new house because whoever was left at home was paying bills or doing laundry or other such “keep daily life afloat” tasks.

By Wednesday night, we were mostly out of the house, Mike had patched and touched up walls and finished the yard work, and the dumpster (to his great chagrin) was still sitting in the driveway [it was supposed to be picked up on Monday. It was not.]. So it was my turn to head over after the evening sprint to do the cleaning. The final walk-through was Thursday afternoon, so I wanted things to look nice and tidy.

By the time I ran a couple errands and caught up with our neighbors, it was 10pm when I started. I buckled down and made good progress. I had just finished vacuuming the basement and planned to load up my supplies so I could mop myself out of the house. As I was eying the things to load, I decided to grab the last few things in our house – which were my houseplants – so we didn’t have to deal with them in the morning. I grabbed one of the plants and turned to walk to the car. Unbeknownst to me, this vine-y plant had intertwined itself with another vine-y plant and the two had become one. But I only had one. So other plant went toppling off the ledge, spilling plant, leaves, and dirt across the newly cleaned floor.

I was too tired to either cry or swear. I simply picked up the mess, re-vacuumed the basement, and successfully transported the rest of the plants to the car. Then, as I went to load up my vacuum, I somehow knocked the canister out of it, dumping everything I had cleaned up all over the floor. Again. WHY!?!?!

Against all odds, I managed to finish up without destroying the house. But since the dumpster was still there and Mike and I have been talking for a couple years about needing a new vacuum (we bought the current one when we got married), my vacuum and I broke up. Target loaded a shiny new one into the back of my car the next morning and by early afternoon, the old vacuum and the dumpster had disappeared from our house. Just in time for the final walkthrough. 

In the midst of all this bouncing between houses, Mike managed to bring our old living room couch and love seat up to a donation warehouse in Bloomington to help out lower income families furnish their homes. And he found a great charity called Keys 4 Kids, where we were able to donate our old piano. We had really struggled with what to do with it and were both so delighted to find it a new home. Hooray!

Meanwhile, I contributed by calling the garbage/recycling place no less than five times in order to transfer our service from the old house to the new. And not a moment too soon. Because we were up to our armpits in garbage and recycling at the new house. Where there were no containers. And we didn't want to be paying for service at the old place - where they had neglected to pick up the containers. 

For so many reasons, we were delighted and relieved on June 11 when our realtor stopped over with a large check and official word that the sale was completed. We loved our old house. But that last week really helped us all mentally (and physically) transition to the new one. We are ready to make new memories here and hope that the new family makes a wonderful life in the old house. 

Now if I could just find an unpacking fairy ...