It has now been over two months since I've been here to my good ole blog. It has been a crazy time of moving our family of nine from our rental house on five acres to our own home in a neighborhood. In what became a rather fast-paced event, we began looking for a home, found one and then moved 30 days later. Since I really can't do-it-all, some - no A LOT - of things had to go and anything social media like was at the top of the list.
We're moved now and all settled in so I'm back to share again. I mean really, I had just decided that turning 50 warranted more blogging and look what happens? Sheesh. I'm still 50, though, so I guess it is better late than never.
There's so much to talk about that's happened over the past two months, if I can just remember it all! Like I said, we were down to a bare bones lifestyle for awhile so I thought I'd share how we handled the whole "move your family in 30 days" thing. And just to be clear, when our offer got accepted, we had not packed ONE box. Not even one! Also, we did all the packing and moving ourselves. Here's how it went down.
1. I knew that we needed to keep schooling as long as possible. With two high-schoolers and two grade-schoolers, I did not want to take off too much time. The high-schoolers kept to their schedule pretty well, it was the two younger ones that needed a revamp since much of what they did required me. Right off the bat we put our non-essential subjects on hold until the second semester. That included geography (which was taking up a lot of time), map skills and Latin. That right there made a huge difference.
2. My three college aged girls all have classes and jobs, so I knew they wouldn't be much help. When they were home and free (about 20 minutes over 30 days :), they were required to help out as much as possible, which they did.
3. My other four kids were an immense help, especially the two in high school! We got into a great rhythm of doing our school work in the morning and then packing and moving things in the afternoon. Because of their hard work, we only ended up taking two weeks off of school!
4. I made a firm decision to add nothing new to our schedule. We kept up with what we were already involved in but we rarely did any other activities or events beyond that. Saying NO was not fun, but crucial.
5. Once we got in the new house I spent the first week working like a mad woman to get it into a state of readiness. I knew that that was all the time I had, so we worked morning till night that first week so that everything was put away and in order. I knew that I wouldn't be able to function for very long with everyone wondering where things were.
So that is how we survived our 30 day moving adventure. Being organized was crucial. Also, the fact that I have decluttered on an ongoing basis made things a lot easier. That's not to say that we still didn't get rid of a lot of stuff! There were MANY bags of garbage as well as multiple trips to the local Goodwill. Hopefully everything that made the cut into the new house is stuff that we need and use and not much that is superfluous!
It's good to be back here and, God willing, I hope to continue on a much more regular basis. I say that, but we'll see what The Plan really is :)
God Bless!
