“Stuff” | Wishes And Pixie Dust

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Mark talked with work today, so it’s all confirmed and we are set to go!

We are going to try to be as active and detailed with this blog as possible. One, it helps to keep us accountable, and see what we have yet to do. Two, we hope that it provides inspiration and guidance to those who may want to follow in our footsteps and follow their dream of moving to Florida. We are currently exploring the possibility of moving away from Blogger as our template, so you may in the next month or so see our website under construction at times.

Goal #1: Go Paperless

We have a lot of paper that comes into this house on a regular basis. Our goal is to have very little mail come into our house. At this point we don’t know where we will live, and it’s possible that we still won’t know on moving day. This, of course, presents a problem in forwarding mail. We can rent a PO Box online, but it’s not active until we pick up the keys in person.

I went to Walmart today and picked up a file box and an expanding file. The goal is to move a 2 drawer file cabinet contents into the file box. I am not sure yet what will be done with the file cabinet. It is an oak file cabinet that was received as a Christmas present 3 years ago, and it is still in excellent shape. It may move with us, it may not. We have time to decide.

The expanding file will serve as our “information” file– all papers that we need with us, such as car titles, housing information, maps, etc. It should solve the question of: “Now where did we put that information”.

No new magazine subscriptions will be ordered or single magazines purchased. It saves money, though we only order free or cheap subs, but more importantly it saves us from having to be concerned with forwarding them on (and moving individual copies). Any new magazines that we wish to read can be obtained from the library for free. Note: It might be hard for me not to pick up Scrapbooks Etc!

A second issue with paper clutter comes with the kids’ school papers. I am not a hoarder except when it comes to my kids’ school papers. As of November of last year, I had every single paper and art project that came into the house. We’re talking years and years of papers! Thankfully, yes, I have seen the light and realize that it does not all need to be kept. A lot was recycled last year, but it will need to be gone through again. I’m thinking maybe a file box for each? And pictures taken of the projects. I can foresee the pictures of the projects as being a scrapbook album project once we are moved!

Thank you all for following us on our journey, and feel free to invite your friends to follow us as well! We appreciate the support and any advice that you may give!

Jen

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

One of my passions is to collect recipes. Ok, not really a passion but a hobby. If I see a recipe I like, I will cut it out of the magazine or paper and place it in a plastic shoebox. When Naveen and I were first married, I did this a lot. There never seemed to be time during the day to sort through the recipe clippings and organize them, so the shoebox moved with us from our home in Chicago to Wisconsin. This was twelve years ago, and believe it or not, last night I finally sorted through that shoebox. I recycled most of what was in there, and the chore took me one hour. Twelve years to store one shoebox. One hour to sort through the shoebox. Yikes.

What does this have to do with moving, you ask?

It makes me wonder, as I look at all our belongings, do we really need all this stuff? Have we held on to it because we really received enjoyment from it, or do we keep it because that’s what people do. They keep their stuff. The pressing question for us right now is: Do we want this badly enough to move it, or can we replace it when we arrive in Florida? We have already made a mental list of what we are selling, and what we are moving. If it has sentimental value or is not easily replaced, it will move with us. Thankfully, the ‘selling’ pile is larger than the ‘keeping’ pile.

The next question at hand is: Do we have a rummage sale to try to sell our possessions, or do we simply Freecycle/Craigslist/Goodwill it? Traditionally we have not done that well at previous sales, but we also were not motivated by a move to Florida, either. We do not live on a busy street, and we would not be able to team up with other families, which I know are two of the big rummage sale “no-no’s”. I’m just not sure it’s worth our time and effort to hold a sale. But then again, it is money that could be put towards moving expenses. Thoughts?

We are excited to be moving forward with our plans; we have updated our website and are so ready to become residents of Florida. Our goal date is September 15, 2012, but we are not opposed to moving earlier if the opportunity arises. We’re so glad that you are following us on our journey and hope to be posting more regularly.

Jen