I Swear I Didn't Give Them Water After Midnight...

Remember that movie Gremlins where the cute little furry animals turn into psychotic killers and multiply if watered at night (or was it just watered period? I don't remember.)

In any case, I feel like my belongings are somehow taking on the characteristics of those Gremlins. I have eliminiated TONS of stuff and yet it feels like what I have is multipying into more and besides the two totally cute pairs of Rocket Dog sandals I *had* to buy at DSW yesterday, I haven't been buying anything.

When I say I have gotten rid of a ton of stuff, I'm not kidding...my queen size bed, a big dresser, a bunch of shelves, boxes of books, lots of kitchen and household stuff. Here's a picture of 128 pounds of clothing I donated on one closet clean-out.



Plus, I can't even count the number of trips to GoodWill I've made this year. I think I could wallpaper a small room with my donation slips.

Yet, it's still looking like I'm going to need a truck bigger than the 16-footer I want to drive to take it all with me. Eeep!

To be fair, a few of my items take up a lot of space.

I had planned on selling my Precor Elliptical 576i Cross Trainer but the market is awful and I'm not going to let a $7,000 purchase made 2 years ago go for $500 on Craig's list. I have space in my new townhouse to use it, so it's going with me.

I also found out that I will need to bring my Kenmore Elite washer and dryer since the ones my townhouse was supposed to come with are being switched out for older, lesser models than I was shown. I suppose it was nice of my landlord to warn me, but those babies take up A LOT of space in the truck. I really can't live without the handwash and the santitary cycles though.

I considered buying new ones on the other end, but I just bought these a little over 2 years ago and to replace them would be close to $3,000. Once again, not going to let them go for $100 on Craig's list. Duh.

This realization brought me to the point of wondering if it's time to explore alternate ways to transport my "stuff" to California. I will still be driving across, but driving cross country in my convertible sounds ultimately more fun than hauling a 24-foot truck with a car in tow behind it--doesn't it?

In searching the Internet for "cross country movers" I came across this blog post that I thought I'd share:
http://cardhouse.com/travel/move.htm
I warn you, it's long and he does more negative ranting than suits my taste, but there's some good advice in it whether you are moving locally or cross country. He's found his preferred method of transfer, now I have to find mine...

Adventures in Gardening

I used to say that I had a black thumb and I wasn't just joking.

When I moved into my first apartment, my mother gave me pieces of several of her plants and I promptly killed them all. (I still don't know what happened, I watered them.) So I bought a few more at Target. One died within a month, the other, some sort of fern, held on for a couple, then turned yellow and wilted.

Not one to give up easily, I bought an outdoor planter and a package of wildflower seeds. For several months I had beautifully colored weed-looking things growing within my vicinity. Ah, success at last.

Fast forward several years when I bought a house and decided I really would like to have some house plants. This time, I consulted my wise mother (she can make anything grow). She said her secret was to mix a little Peter's Plant Food in the water every couple of months.

I went searching for Peter's Plant Food. I didn't find it, but what I did find changed my relationship with plants forever! I bought a few more plants, used my new find and amazing things happened:

• One litte plant grew too large for it's pot in just weeks.


• Another had to be repotted twice in a three month period.


• And a ficus that was about 6 inches high when I bought it is now almost 6 FEET tall
  

What is the magic potion I found?

Miracle Grow.

Aptly named, stick one spike of this stuff in a plant and you can almost watch the thing get bigger. Of course, I've never been one for moderation. I stuck four spikes in the ficus. heehee

The problem is I now have this huge, gorgeous ficus plant that I need to leave in Maryland since I don't think it would survive the six to seven days it would spend in a hot moving truck to bring it to CA.

Anyone interested in giving a fabulous ficus a home?

By the way, the plant's name is Frank. He drinks about a pitcher of water a week and enjoys sun. He prefers to be the only plant in a room and instead of being dusted with a cloth, he likes to be lightly misted. He is very well-behaved and if you rotate his pot around, he will grow even on all the sides.

House for Sale

I've never had to prepare a house for sale before. Although I have owned, the purchaser bought direct from me without the involvement of real estate agents, Open Houses or lock boxes, so I was able to live my life and pack at a leisurely pace. I had no idea how lucky I was.

Even though the house belongs to my roommate, I promised I'd help to sell it. So, today, I spent all day working on making the house look "not lived in but comfortable enough for someone to want to live in".

Since I wasn't sure precisely how to get that effect, I followed the real estate agents handy directions exactly:
--the kitchen table is set (do people really do this in their homes?)
--there are fresh flowers on the table
--there are beautifully smelling candles sitting in strategic places
--the tv is set on a nice jazz station (what is it about jazz that makes people want to buy a house??)
--and there is ZERO clutter--as long as you don't look in the garage or my office drawers. :)

By clutter, I mean anything that might not allow the potential buyers to connect with the house as being their own. This means removing all photographs, trinkets from trips, magazines and for me, everything on the top of my desk that's business related minus a stapler and my Day Planner. I'm sure many of you have gone through this many times. I really feel for those of you with children...where do you put all that stuff?

Until now, I had no idea how much I had personalized my space and was a reflection of me and my style. It was fun to go through the house and collect things that make me smile or bring back a fond memory. I packed them all away and am looking forward to finding them a new place to jingle my memory in my new townhouse.

I don't want this to sound like I have a bunch of stuff sitting around, because I don't. The items I do have though--artwork, framed photographs, unique gifts from clients, books I'm reading, herbs I'm taking all are a little window into who I am.

I find it interesting that when selling a house agents say people don't want people to know who has lived there. I think it would be great to know how the space was lived in and who made it their home. Maybe I'm weird...

What about you? When buying a house do you want to know who lived there and what their life was like while they did?

Moving Date Determined!

It's official! The moving date is Tuesday, June 24.

How I Choose June 24
In April, I decided California or bust. I had been sitting in inaction and was waiting for I don't know what to happen before I took the steps to move. that stopped being OK with me.

So, I looked at the calendar and saw that June is a long month and then it flows into a holiday week with Fourth of July. Since I see my clients either twice a month or three times a month this makes it easy to take two weeks off to drive across the country and get settled.

So, why not Monday, June 23rd?
I teach for an online university and I have three classes that I'm teaching on Mondays in June, so it made more sense to teach and pack the truck on Monday, so I wouldn't need to get substitutes to cover for me. I LOVE the flexibility of my work!

So, mark your calendars! June 24th is the day that Jeannie and I will roll out of Baltimore on I-70 heading West. Our plan is to make it to San Diego by the evening of June 29. Watch out, America!

My Theory of Stuff

Part of this move is about clearing out the old to make room for the new. In doing so, I am going through every box, closet, drawer and container with intense scutiny. Through this process, I have found items spanning back to my childhood and trailing through all of my past years to the present.

It was somewhere between sneezes in the dusty garage that my theory of stuff was born.

Leah's Completely Unofficial Unproven Theory of Stuff

Baby Stuff
When we're born, we have no stuff. Technically, our crib and all those baby shower goodies are our parent's stuff to take care of us.

Children Stuff
As we grow older, we get gifts for brithdays and Christmas or buy things with our allowance that becomes our stuff. This stuff is often disposable things we grow out of -- Barbie dolls, Ninetendo, (OK, I know some men who haven't grown out of this, but that's a whole other discussion <>), tricycle, Easy-Bake oven, etc.

Teen Stuff
In our teen years, we want the stuff our friends have so we can be like them even though they have no idea who they are either. And, of course, we want a car so we can go do stuff.

College Stuff
Out on our own, we realize that most of what we've been using to live (furniture, pots and pans, bed, etc.) wasn't our stuff. We scramble to find basic living stuff wherever we can for as cheap as we can. After all, money needs to be spent on important things like a wicked Halloween costume and bar cover charges. This basic living stuff is usually mismatched and used, but we don't care, it works.

20-Something Stuff
Once out of college and into a paying job and housing that is respectable, we replace our college stuff with matching stuff. For most people I've observed matching stuff means foam IKEA couches and Target particle board furniture that takes three people to figure out the directions that are only vaguely corrent once you do get it put together. However, it's inexpensive, and compared to the worn bean bag you bought at a garage sale, it looks pretty decent.

Married Stuff
Promotions kick in, you get married, buying a home happens and suddenly that once cool looking space age plastic IKEA chair with the lime green cushion doesn't cut it for the kind of stuff you want. One wedding registry and a Pottery Barn credit card later and the whole house has been outfitted in better matching stuff. Wedding gift registries are all about better matching stuff!

It's this married better matching stuff that I have been selling off. For one, I have been divorced for 13 years. When I think about it, it's a little creepy that I still have so much stuff from then still around--the blender, towels, vases, pots and pans, dishes, etc.--all wedding gifts.

Why do I still have it? Well, that's the thing about better matching stuff. It doesn't fall apart when it's moved, and moved again, and moved again...

Now that I'm getting rid of the better matching stuff, I wonder what's next? Is there a better than better matching stuff--Gucci furniture or something that is the next phase?

Does my theory of stuff fit for you? Where are you in the "stuff continuum"? I'd love to hear your stories...

Serial Mover Comes Out of the Closet

"Hi, my name is Leah. I am a serial mover and this is my first time admitting it."

"Hi Leah." (say participants in an imaginary room)

OK, there, I've done it. I have admitted that I might have an addiction to moving.

Some people have moved around the country and the world because of being in the military or due to job transfers. I, on the other hand, have always moved completely out of choice.

Don't try to blame my parents either. From when I was born until when I made my first solo move out of state to college, we lived in Colorado in three different places, so not much moving as a child.

My first solo move to college was met with much resistance. Aside from Mom wanting to keep her eldest girl close to home, I had a very generous scholarship to the University of Colorado Boulder. College in-state would've kept me debt-free upon graduation. However, my wanderlust was far stronger than what was financial practical. I had decided it was time to see more of the world.

So some people ask, "Why did you start with Texas?" (I went school at Trinity in San Antonio.) My answer..."It was warm." My other option was Northwestern University located on a frozen lake with temperatures colder than Colorado--umm, no. And Trinity gave me a $7,000 scholarship, but since it was a private school, that only made a small dent in tuition costs. However, it was worth it.

In San Antonio, I was able to get exposure to the country of Texas (oh, I mean the state of Texas) and of Mexico since at the time I lived there, the population of S.A. was 3/4 Hispanic--most of whom were originally from Mexico. Let's just say that I regretted having taken French in high school.

In any case, that first move set me off on what became an adventure that has seen me living in five states:
Colorado
Texas
California
Nevada
Maryland

Sixteen cities:
Denver, CO
Morrison, CO
Littleton, CO
Aurora, CO
Denver, CO
Westminster, CO
San Antonio, TX
Pacific Beach, CA
San Mateo, CA
Marina del Rey, CA
Santa Monica, CA
Mar Vista, CA
Waldorf, MD
La Plata, MD
Montgomery County, MD
Owings Mills, MD

and countless apartments and houses. And, I do mean countless. I moved seven times in five years several years back.

WHY?!?!

Of course each move has it's specific reasons, but I love moving because every time I move it's a fresh start. I get to live in a new place, see new things, hang out with new people and reorganize everything I own (Yes, I do findorganizing fun!).

Some starts are fresher than others. Meaning that one time I moved it was into a house five houses down the street from the one I was living in. Long story...not for this blog.

The moving bug has struck me again. This time, I'm moving to Encinitas California.

This move is a biggie.

Here are the reasons why:
-- I am committed to it being the freshest start I've made yet (I'll explain more about this in future posts)
-- My girlfriend and I are going to take six days to drive a rental truck towing my car and bringing my dog the roughly 3,000 miles across the middle of the US in late June.
-- I am selling almost all of my furniture and other personal items and buying all new stuff on the other end.

I created this blog so that friends, family, clients, colleagues and anyone else who has an interest can join me on my journey, offer their opinions, laugh, commisserate or whatever.

Are you a serial mover too? Or do you think I'm crazy? Go ahead...comment...