Boxes

Several months ago I wrote about putting our house on the market, and never got around to updating you all on how that panned out. Well, we didn't get an offer that would have been worth the effort of packing up and moving at 9 months pregnant, and pulled the pin. This left us right back where we started, and when the "oven" packed it in it was the last straw. We decided to renovate.

It took some financial wizardry and a whole lot of planning, hours and hours of excruciating budgeting and planning, but we are now less than 5 days away from demolition day. I never thought I could be so excited at the prospect of men coming into my house with sledgehammers and crow bars but I cannot wait! We're not going overboard, since we can't make the place any bigger and will probably outgrow it soon enough, but we are doing everything we've dreamed about doing since we moved in - new floors, re-plastering and painting, new double-glazed windows, a walk-in wardrobe, toy storage under that stairs, and the crowning glory - a brand new kitchen (with a real oven, and a dishwasher!). The beauty of having to wait for these seemingly simple things for so long is that they will be appreciated all the more when we finally have them (with any luck, by September).

The only sticking point is that we have to move out... We have friends who will be home in Canada for the summer and they have kindly offered us their place for a couple of months. It's a nicer place than ours will ever be, with a yard (and grass!) and a pool, so we're quite excited about living there for a while. But we have been packing for what feels like weeks. I am a bit obsessive when it comes to packing. I like to take the opportunity to clear out stuff we've been hanging onto for too long. I also like to know what's in every box so it's easier when it comes time to unpack. It's a good method, but it makes it really difficult for anyone trying to help me... Moving out to renovate is also quite different to simply moving. Some of our things will have to be in storage for a couple of months, so we need to decide what we will take with us to our temporary home and what we can do without.

Our friends have kids, so we won't need to take many toys. They were the first things I packed and surprisingly few of them have been missed. I do have to pack when Josh is asleep though, as he spots me putting something in a box and cries "I want it, I want it!" and pulls it out again. I'm embarrassed to admit that the chaos of boxes everywhere doesn't look all that different to the chaos of living here. Something else that will hopefully change when we move back in. We all stopped caring about the state of the place a while ago, but this move and all the changes we are making will be like a cleansing, and I will care very much when the house is "new" and everything has a place.

We've just been told that the removalists can only come a day earlier than we planned, so I'll be moving with both boys, and spending our first night somewhere different on my own, tomorrow. But I still can't wait. That says a lot about how much I want this.