Now that we are in our new hoose (I did that on purpose), life is beginning to settle. The boxes are almost all unpacked, and it's beginning to look like we live here, not like we're staying for a few weeks.
Moving in was incredibly hectic. The day the movers arrived was one I won't be forgetting soon. The boxes just kept coming in....and coming in. Since we had a finished basement in Madison, and since there are no basements in Scotland, I obviously hadn't accounted for the serious lack of space here. By about four o'clock, the boxes were piled to the ceiling, the furniture was crammed in, and I was seriously sweating it. The last straw was when they lugged in a huge armoire that I used down in our basement for a television. "Where should we put this?" they asked, and we all couldn't help but laughing (me...I felt like crying, but I laughed instead). At that point, I did the only thing I could do: I started giving things away. Lucky for me, one of the movers had just bought a new place and needed furniture. I gave him a lot. I even found out that he had a daughter and started giving him toys, too, whether he wanted them or not.
Of course, this got me thinking about "stuff". I thought I'd done a fairly decent job before we left of purging a LOT of stuff. What would I have done if I hadn't? I wouldn't have been able to fit it all in here. I also noticed how many things I've been lugging around with me since god-knows-when, like certain books. My college yearbook weighs a ton, and I've been moving that damn thing around with me since I was 22. I looked at it again and realized that out of 2,000 pages, I was on ONE of them. A tiny little picture of me, and not even a good one.
I brought over a roll-top desk that my parents got me for Christmas when I was a little girl. I love the desk, but when it came in the house, I was cursing myself over and over for not bringing it to my parent's garage loft before I left. Now I have this desk....and no where to put it. Two rocking chairs....do I really need two rocking chairs? Do we really need all those pillows? How did we get so many shoes? And the toys....my GOD, the toys. My kids barely even touch them. I'm not sure that Christmas shopping for the girls is going to hold the same appeal for me this year.
So I gave a lot to charity, and will probably continue doing so with all these little things that I can barely stand to look at any more. The buck stops here, after all.
Another shocker is the amount of work we'll have to do to the house. Our last house was built just for us, so we didn't have to contend with holes in walls, bad paint jobs, and broken-down appliances. I forgot just how lazy people can be when it comes to taking care of their houses, and especially with doing jobs around the house. In the laundry room, there are two shelves on adjacent walls that were drilled in at completely different heights. Now really....come on.
My favorite room in our new house, however, is the sun room (or the conservatory). Windows from wall to ceiling, bright, beautiful. It looks out onto our little backyard (sorry, "garden") and all the trees behind it. I love to have my cup of tea out there in the morning. My second favorite room is the guest bedroom, because now that my mom is back home, I can slip out of our bed when David is snoring and slip right into peace and quiet. Ahhhhhh.
I am enjoying the new and making this house ours. Eventually....gradually.....settling in.
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