Peeking at Packing

I wanted to at least have one post about packing - for personal posterity more than anything else, probably.

Our move to Kokomo was my first time to properly move anywhere in my life. (When I moved out of my parents' house after college, I didn't really have much to my name, so I didn't feel like it counted as a true move.)

Four years ago, I spent a good month packing a little at a time, and then the whole move went wonky when we ended up bringing the stuff over early on an unplanned day, and it wasn't all entirely packed, and we moved the garage on a different day, so although it went well (meaning we got everything moved), it wasn't the smoothest move ever in life. And I wanted this time to be different.

And it was.

The first key, I think, was having less stuff. Even though I had done a LOT of purging before we left Marion for Kokomo, we still had more stuff than we have now. I labeled more boxes then - and didn't even get to make labels for all the boxes we moved. We downsized quite a bit more this time and I have a feeling we'll be purging a few more things as we settle in.

Fun fact about this move: we saw our new apartment on day of our interview, but because we didn't know if we would get the job, it was really more like taking a walk through someone else's home than looking at our own potential home. We didn't measure anything, we didn't take pictures of anything, and there were some rooms (like their kids' bedrooms and the laundry room) that we didn't even really see more than a quick peek). So when we got the job, we had no idea how many square feet of living space we would have or the dimensions of the rooms - nothing. Rob did send us a printed layout of the apartment, but even it was a bit different than how it actually looks, so it wasn't fully accurate. Therefore, as we packed to move, there were some things we weren't sure we'd have room for, so we just packed them and decided to figure it out on this end. We didn't get to walk into the apartment with a measuring tape until four days before we moved our things.

When we moved from Marion to Kokomo, I bought this planner from Etsy, and I loved the way it helped me organize the move. I had master lists of all the boxes and what was packed in each one. I had printed labels for packed boxes and could make copies of those labels for my moving binder too. It was really, really helpful. In fact, I have continued to use it these last four years to find things in storage!

So when we prepped for this move, I pulled it back out of my digital archives and started printing new labels!

I started packing in the rooms I felt like we could safely live without the most. The guest room, linen closet, and guest bath were the first to make their way into boxes, followed by my beloved home office. (I did keep out a few of the things I thought we would continue using, like pens and tape and sticky notes and such.)

The week I started packing was also my last week to work at the church, so I could only pack in the evenings. The second week, Ryan was still working, but I wasn't. I mostly packed during the day that week and then we had a lot of goodbye meetings and dinners in the evenings after Ryan got home.

The final week of packing, we were both off work and spent much of each day (and some evenings, too) finishing the job.

Though I did the bulk of the organizing and packing, I was so thankful for all the help Ryan gave. He found all our boxes for us, he carried the heavy stuff out to the garage after I packed it, and on that last week when we were both off work, he jumped right in and helped pack the boxes while I labeled and prepared them. Teamwork for the win!

Quick side note: even though I try to be fairly open and transparent about our life when I write on the blog, I am aware that it is a public forum and therefore there are some things I choose not to blog about ever (not hiding anything, just choosing to keep some parts of life reserved for us) and some things that I choose to blog about on a delay for privacy and/or safety reasons.

This move has been a tricky one for me to blog about freely because we were unable to actually move to Grabill when we began our training. Rob and his family were still living in the apartment that would become ours and it just worked out for them to stay in it a bit beyond our training arrival. Because of that, our stuff was waiting on us in Kokomo, and we were living in temporary housing for the first 2 1/2 weeks. I didn't really want to announce that on the blog - but we're all reunited with our things and our girl now, so I'll be catching up here over the next few days.

We are thankful that the new owners of Shafferland 2.0 went several extra miles (literally and figuratively) to house-sit for us in that transition period. They spent time at our/their house every day, caring for Braeya, making sure the house was okay, and taking care of our plants! It helped ease my mind so much to know they were there watching over everything. Braeya LOVES them, and we could tell when we came back for our mid-move visit that she had been well-loved and well-cared-for.

And now I'm excited to UNpack all the things and assemble a new home for us!!