Let's see how long the latter lasts. Actually, let's see how long either lasts. We have now moved FOUR TIMES in less than two years.
Granted, one of those moves was within the same buildings. But STILL.
I have told Andrew I am never going to move again after this. We are just going to have to live in this new apartment forever.
It's a two bedroom with just over a seven hundred square feet. So smaller than our last space, but we actually don't have that much stuff and much of what we do have is temporary-ish kid stuff, like cribs and car seats and strollers. Seriously, excluding the kid stuff, I don't think we even have 10 pieces of furniture.
The biggest thing honestly is books. We have so many books and they literally have done nothing for the past two years but sit in boxes. Andrew has an entire floor to ceiling bookshelf worth of theology books he's holding onto with the plan of going back to seminary eventually. And even though I was pretty ruthless during our move out from D.C., I still have about a full bookshelf and a half worth myself, although a lot of those are classics I'm holding onto because I want them to be on our shelves when Theo and L get older. But still it's so much to keep dragging around right now. I keep questioning whether I'm falling for the sunk cost fallacy by just dragging them along with me move after move.
The trouble is that in Andrew's case seminary books are expensive to buy and basically worthless to resell. In my
case, I'm actually tremendously sentimental about the particular copies I own. Some of them I inherited from my mother, and a lot of the classic children's books are antiques I curated over the years with my father back when I was in my teens. My criteria was that they had to be in good condition, with beautiful illustrations, and less than $8.... it took me years to find some of the books on my list, like Hans Brinker, I spent five years trying to find a copy that met all the requirements.
So, the ten unopened boxes of books come with us.
Luckily, last year I bought a bedframe with a simply incredible amount of storage space under it. So we can stash all the books under the bed until we decide to pull them out and buy enough bookshelves to accommodate them.
My new kitchen is quite a bit smaller too. I've been brainstorming the best way to organize and store my cooking equipment. For the most part I have a pretty slim and multipurpose selection of cooking items, honestly 90% of my cooking is typically done with chopsticks. But, I'm really not as neat in the kitchen as I'd like. I hate having cluttered counters, but they always seem to be accumulating things on them. Now I'm not going to have a spare inch to spare, so maybe I'll be driven to keep the surfaces as clean as I always intend to.
I read through Marie Kondo's book Spark Joy and her recommendation for kitchens is to organize them for ease of cleaning rather than ease of cooking; meaning try to put every last thing into the cabinets so that the surfaces are easy to wipe down. I've had the kitchen mostly organized for about two days now and it seems true. I'm still fiddling around with it though. But focusing on cleaning efficiently rather than cooking definitely seemst to be on the mark. Andrew washed the dishes for the first time in the new space and immediately commented on how much easier it was.
But so far this move seems good. The area is so perfect for our family right now, there are closer parks and grocery stores and we're further from busy roads. Despite having just moved with a toddler and a mobile infant life actually feels easier. I'm sure there will be bumps ahead, but feel really happy about this. Then again, that might just be because the sun came out this week.
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