How Does One Prepare to Move a Family of Five to Another Country?
This post is my life hack for the day. I have found it difficult to motivate myself to write recently. Most topics on my mind seem a little TMI for this platform. Until I figure out how to write about what I am really processing without feeling I am exposing myself too much, I thought it might be interesting to discuss what the front burners of my brain are cooking up. I don’t know how other people prepare to move across country, but here is a snap-shot of what it looks like for our family. This is my to-do list for last Thursday.
To Do Thursday:
- School w/brother and sister
- Fake-pack Big Sister’s bags
- Move any unpacked items to garage sale pile
- Smart N Final (pick-up 50lbs bag of potatoes and drop off donations letter)
- scrapbook
- Purchase envelope to mail support letter to ________ church
- Drop letter in mailbox
- Take support letter to Costco
- Take support letter to Sprouts
- Take support letter to Food 4 Less
- Walk w/friend
- Peruse http://www.dummies.com/ for links on running a non-profit
- E-mail blurp and photo about RMH service project to __________ for announcing at church.
- E-mail volunteers for RMH update about what to expect
Just so no one starts to feel inadequate, I got to maybe half of what is on this list. We did most of our school work, fake-packed Big Sister, went to Smart-n-Final and stopped into Dollar Tree since it was next door, purchased an envelope, had lunch with Mike, took a donations letter to Whole Foods since I was in the neighborhood, flaked on my friend, perused the website, e-mailed volunteers, e-mailed the blurp and forgot to e-mail a photo. Still, I felt pretty good about my progress. Everything is one step closer.
Since we weren’t already busy enough during this season, I decided to plan a rather large scale service project for Little B’s birthday. Our family and friends will be serving dinner to the 150-200 family members who will come to dine at the RMH cafeteria on March 15th. Hence the need to hit-up grocery stores for donations. The fifty pound bag of potatoes is actually just for our family to consume. Yes, we do actually go through it. When cutting out bread, pasta and cereal, we have found potatoes to be an essential substitute at just about every meal. Scrapbooking may seem like a rather unnecessary to-do item in light of all the other things to be done. What it really means is sorting all of our photos into piles of scan, give to other people, put into a scrapbook, or throw away. I am attempting to downsize to one photo album for myself pre-Mike and one photo album of our family.
This means we are only keeping physical copies of the very best photos. All the rest we are organizing onto an external hard drive. This will feel so freeing once it is done, but it is very time consuming work. I am so close, though, I can feel it. Fortunately, Mike is the scanner. I just make the piles and put the physcial ones into the scrapbook/photo album. The kids and I are also making them first year baby scrapbooks. We are hoping to finish this project by the end of February. Here are our other goals for February:
February goals:
- Finish scanning photos
- B’s Birthday Dinner
- Begin power point presentation
- Fake pack-minimize anything not going with us or absolutely need for next 4 months
- List all large items on Craigslist
- Garage sale/donate small items
- Clean-up yards
- Stage house/furniture for viewing
- Small house repairs
In looking at the list, however, I see that we are no longer going to list large items on Craiglist. Instead, we are planning to do an estate sale because we think we might die after completing everything on this list. Just kidding, according to Mike, an “estate” sale can mean that one is selling one’s estate as opposed to only meaning that one’s family is selling one’s estate after one’s unfortunate demise. So, if you’re in the area, be looking forward to coming and getting a great deal on our stuff! In the meantime, wish us some early St. Patty’s Day luck that we can keep the momentum and keep working away toward our goal.
Just in case you were wondering, I’m just too tired to get pictures off our desktop computer to put on this post, so my life hack is to use the photos we’ve been scanning instead. I hope you’ve enjoyed a stroll down my memory lane as much as my husband has. 😀
DIYtheGoodLife 