Tag: moving house

Emergency Book Pile

Emergency Book Pile

Paul is optimistic that the removal men will be able to waltz in on Friday, finish off the packing, whisk everything into the back of a truck, and have all our belongings spirited away in no time at all.

I, as usual, am less optimistic.

I keep looking around the house (and especially in the Shed) and seeing the mountains of things still not in boxes. And the mountains of boxes without lids, or labels, and insecurely taped.

These books are deliberately not in boxes, as they’re the ones I think I’l most need while all the others are packed away.

(Yes, the coloured pencils will be going into the same bag!)

Milly’s Pumpkin Dress

Milly's Pumpkin Dress

It’s two years since I last made a hallowe’en costume for Milly, so I thought I’d better fulfil my role of Aunty Who Sews, and make another one!

My Mum spotted a knitted pumpkin hat in a magazine, which is what gave me the idea to make a matching pumpkin dress.

This is Butterick 3772, in orange polycotton, with black felt for the face. I think it’s the third one of these that I’ve made now. This one’s fully lined, partly because the fabric’s quite thin, and partly because I wanted to bag out the hem to create a puffball effect. The lining was cut about an inch shorter at the hem, and about an inch narrower on each side. The top layer was then gathered to match, and the difference in length between the inside and the outside pulls the seam underneath. It’s not quite as puffy as I’d have liked, but I think it will look very cute!

And now, at long last, we have a moving date! After months of waiting, we’re making the move next Friday! Eek! So, this is the last thing I’ll sew (by machine, at any rate) before we move. My task for this afternoon is to pack up the machines, and start shoving the rest of the contents of the Shed into boxes. Wish me luck!

Still Moving House.

This somewhat unpreposessing photo, taken sometime last winter, in the rain, is two-thirds of the back garden of the house that STILL ISN’T OURS. We first went to visit it at the beginning of June. Tomorrow is the beginning of October. And we still don’t live there.

I realise that four months, just heading into the fifth, is a very short period of time when it comes to selling houses. I know a lot of people whose moves have taken a lot longer, for a lot of complicated reasons.

But we’ve been living amongst boxes since the beginning (we had to put a lot of things into storage before our house was pretty enough to be sold), and I’m sitting on the sofa looking at two empty bookshelves and nine enormous cardboard boxes where the books now live. I haven’t been able to look anything up for months! All of our artwork has been taken down, the rabbit’s still living with a friend, and right now the weather’s turned so cold that I’m rather wishing I hadn’t packed the quilt that usually lives on the back of the sofa!

I think the worst thing is that it’s completely out of our hands. We’ve handed over and searched out and signed every piece of paperwork we’ve been asked for, and a few more besides. The estate agent, contrary to popular opinion, has actually been fantastic, facilitating communication between the three of us in the chain, and keeping us all as well-informed as he possibly can. It’s all with the solicitors, there’s nothing more we can do to move things along.

So all we can do now is wait. And wait. And wait.

(The difficulty being that I am really not a patient person.)

The packing has begun.

The packing has begun.

We’ve been packing up bits and pieces around the house for a few weeks now, mostly getting everything out of the loft and chucking lots of things away. Today we reached the point where we’d be packing things we need and use, so it was time to start on the Shed. Thankfully most things are stored in small boxes and drawers anyway, so it was just a case of piling them all up inside the big packing boxes. I’m trying very hard to pack like with like, so I don’t have to rummage through a dozen boxes to find one small thing at the other end. We’re going to need a LOT more boxes to fit everything in.

The fabric and thread are all staying out for a little while longer, and I’ve also held on to one big reel of elastic, so I’ll be making things that I can put together with no other haberdashery – everything else is in one of those big boxes up the corner!

Now I just need to try and stay patient a bit longer. We found out yesterday that it had taken one set of solicitors (not ours, thankfully) an utterly ridiculous TWO WEEKS to deliver the latest round of paperwork, which is infuriating. We could have moved in by now, if they weren’t taking so long! And they’re being paid a small fortune, to apparently not do their job very well. Like I said, infuriating!

Still. We’re getting rid of some more things today – 90 paper bags and a couple of hundred CD cases are moving on to new homes. Then I just need to get rid of one lovely-but-rusty bike, and my old sewing machine and overlocker.

We’re getting there.

Slowly.

Mere drawers cannot contain her bountiful abundance.

Storage Solutions

No, this isn’t going to be another post about my underwear, thank goodness.

Anybody who’s spent any time living in the same house as me (family, my long-suffering housemates at Blenheim Road, a couple of husbands…) will be all too aware that I’m a very messy person, and I have Too Much Stuff. I have always maintained that given the right amount and combination of storage, I could become a Tidy Person. This assertion is usually met with rolled eyes and gales of laughter. But, the further we get into the process of packing up the house to move, the more I think I might actually be right!

So far, I haven’t bought any new storage solutions specifically for the move. We don’t know precisely how everything’s going to fit into the space at the new house (assuming we actually get it), and we don’t want to move any more belongings than we have to. Everything here was in the house or the Shed already, I’m just cramming stuff inside and trying to label everything as I go. Rather than just throwing all my things into large boxes marked “jewellery stuff” or “craft supplies” or “haberdashery”, it seemed to make sense to be a lot more specific. That way I don’t have to spend years unpacking at the other end, wondering where on earth in the giant box marked “jewellery stuff” my favourite pair of pliers has got to.

(What do you mean, you haven’t got a favourite pair of pliers? You’ll be telling me you haven’t got a favourite pair of scissors next. Or a favourite child.)

Storage Solutions

These cardboard storage drawers had been pressed into use already, during my previous bout of frenzied Shed-tidying. It turns out that knowing exactly where all your stuff is, and not having to hunt for it every single time, can make you more efficient! Who knew?! The drawers are from Muji, shoebox sized, and they’re squished into one of those wardrobe-hanging shoe storage things. I have twenty altogether (although I can currently only find nineteen, typical), and they were bought years and years ago to house my ever-increasing shoe collection.

Storage Solutions

The small cardboard drawers with the little fabric pull tabs are also from Muji, and they’re long and thin. I have two sets of these, one of which I moved, still flat in its original packaging, from my previous house to this one. (And Paul tried to tell me I should throw it away, because I hadn’t used it yet and obviously didn’t need it. The man has no idea!) I can’t remember what I was planning to keep in them when I bought them, but now one holds some of my craft supplies, and the other holds jewellery-making tools such as hammers, ring mandrels and a hand drill. That should tell you something about how sturdy these cardboard pieces are too – I’ve had the bottoms fall out of cheap Argos drawers with fewer heavy things inside them.

I miss Muji. I had a look online, and they don’t seem to make this kind of cardboard furniture any more. Which is a shame, because I could do with a couple more sets of these, for things that are too long to fit into the shoe boxes.

The green wooden drawers in the top photo are from Ikea. I have (brace yourselves) never actually been to an Ikea, but we do own a small amount of their bits and pieces. (Yes, including a massive bag of tealights that we never burn.) I also have a slightly larger set which currently houses shoe polish, and Paul has a few of these plywood magazine files. When we move, I want to buy enough of these to house my complete collection of The Knitter, and paint them to match the decor of the new place. When his CD collection outgrew the three sets of Ikea plywood CD storage drawers they were living in, Paul donated those to me, and now they’re housing more craft supplies and stationery.

I still need to wrestle a few things in the Shed out of their “miscellanous” boxes and into the appropriate drawer. And then do the same with the two boxes of craft supplies that have been living unopened under the bed for several years. But I remain absolutely firm in my conviction that I am only messy because I simply don’t have enough storage. I really, really hope that turns out to be true!

Pinterest-ready?

Apparently this is what my kitchen looks like now.

Moving house is a funny business. Paul and I (well, okay, mostly Paul) have spent the past two weeks scrubbing our house and tidying it to within an inch of our lives, as well as redistributing a good chunk of our belongings amongst kind people’s spare bedrooms and garages across the county.

This is the dining end of our kitchen. Doesn’t it look lovely? Apart from the grainy photo, it’s almost Pinterest-ready, I’d say! Sadly, when I look at this, after “ooh, those flowers smell lovely”, all I can think is “where am I supposed to dry the laundry now?”. Usually this area is full of clothes airers, and the chairs normally live in different rooms. The cushions were pinched from the sofa, when I suddenly realised that the red-and-gold upholstered chairs matched the kitchen before Paul decorated it. And please note the beautiful pale duck-egg blue on the wall… that we nearly didn’t have, because Paul thought it might be “too bright”. Suffice it to say that we do not have the same taste in colours, not even slightly!

The tablecloth (twice the size of this table) has been carefully ironed and folded to hide the old red wine stain that won’t wash out. Those are Emma Bridgewater egg cups, but they’ve never been used because I don’t much like boiled eggs, and I’m not very good at cooking them anyway. The lovely blue glass jug was my Mum’s – a wedding gift that now neither of us have ever used!

Even the artwork isn’t ours. Paul bought the frames at some point around Christmas, but we couldn’t be bothered to move the laundry out of the way to put them on the wall. They even came with these prints included – sufficiently abstract that it doesn’t even matter which way up you hang them. We’ll probably replace them with our own photographs at some point… but we’ve got so many to choose from that it could take us years to decide which ones!

The house will go on the market early next week, so hopefully all this cleaning and clearing and staging will make itself worthwhile. I’m just not certain how we’re supposed to live in such a tidy house until we move out! I’m such an untidy person that all these empty rooms are making me very uncomfortable indeed. Thankfully the Shed is still a complete mess… I suppose I’d better tackle that next!