Now, it's Getting Real

Up to this point, a lot of our preparation for the big renovation had been somewhat nebulous and surreal. We'd been looking for something a bit more tangible to make it truly hit home. Even signing the documents at the loan closing still felt a little distant and detached. That feeling has officially ended. We finally moved out of the house that had been "home" for the last ten years, where we raised a 9 year old daughter and two wonderful dogs. When the storage POD showed up in our driveway, things got REAL.

On Columbus Day, we had two sets of movers show up. One to load up with stuff we were going to need in our rental house for the next 7-9 months. The other crew was tasked with packing the rest of our stuff to put it into storage. For anyone who has reached a fourth or even fifth decade of life, you learn quickly just how much crap you've accumulated over all of that time.

It's embarrassing actually, because WHY do we keep all of that garbage? The amount of stuff that we have versus what we truly need is absolutely staggering. I joked at least a couple of times during our move, that we could probably lose half of our stuff in a fire or a flood and we would be just fine. We just hang on to stuff for the sake of sentimentality, and not having to make the hard decision of either donating it or tossing it in the trash. We need to take inventory and employ the "if I haven't used it in the past year, then it goes" mentality. That would probably cull half to a third of our junk. It's crazy to see how much room we actually have in the house without all of our furniture and stuff in it. Of course, that's the point, isn't it? We're trying to give ourselves a lot more room without adding too much other stuff to fill that space. Obviously, with a couple of new rooms we'll have to get some new items, but at this point, we've got plenty to fill the voids. That may fall on deaf ears, though. :-)  We just got some great news from our builder, saying that we are just days away from getting our building permit, so now the real fun can begin. We'll actually get so see some progress on the physical form of the house. I'll be sure to have all the juicy details and pictures when that officially begins.