Moving Cross Country, Part 1 -- Painfully Good!

 In October 2022, my husband and I moved to Yulee, Florida, from a home we'd lived in for 32 years, and a community we'd been in for 41+  --  needless to say, a challenging move in many ways. Yulee is a wonderful, quiet little community, northeast of Jacksonville, FL, and near Fernandina Beach, FL, snugged up right next to the Georgia border.  We're still getting acquainted with this lovely place, looking forward to the experience and to building and adding to our network, with NEW friends here!

 West Richland home of 32 years

The process of packing the home, hauling it by rental truck to Florida, and unpacking it, made both of us painfully aware of the volume of our belongings, even though we were able to move the entire contents of our home interior, the garage, and a 16'x20' shed in a 16' truck. We have determined to declutter and downsize even further, regardless of how long we remain in our new home.  Others looked at what we were moving and were amazed at how minimal it was for 39 years of married life, but we were annoyed!  😕😖

I'm going to share some of the mental & emotional points involved as well as the practical things I did for packing in the move process (next post).

There was a LOT going on for us on many levels:

My 20-year career as a Spanish medical interpreter took a sudden turn the middle of 2021, and my interpreting workload dropped by probably 90%+. Thankfully, the home organizing business took off with both new and repeat clients, and it kept me happily busy until the relocation, but the shift away from interpreting was full of mixed emotions, as it had also been (mostly) highly rewarding work for me.

My husband's 41-year career at the Hanford reservation had an unanticipated end due to covid-related circumstances. This was, of course, a major shift for him financially, socially, vocationally, and consequently, emotionally and spiritually. What affects one of us, affects both of us. (In 2022 he did return part-time in contract mode to mentor his successor.)

That change resulted in the loss of insurance coverage through his work, and the transition to new coverage was challenging, at best, and very time consuming.

My mother died in May of 2022, and although we are delighted for her transition to perfect health and all good things in Heaven with Jesus, she is missed, and her passing and the preceding process was difficult and also somewhat time consuming. 

My 93-year-old father is now carrying on without his wife of 65 years, and the inability to at least make a day trip to see him is...let's say emotionally charged to some degree.

My 92-year-old father-in-law was/is experiencing some serious health issues, on the East coast, adding more "interesting elements" to things on our minds during the same period.

The process of selling a home (first time), packing belongings and then living in other peoples' spaces for about 6 weeks, the subsequent home search (virtual viewings) and purchase during those 6 weeks, separation from friends and family as we made the physical relocation, the travel, the unpacking, the many updates needed in the new house...  There have been plenty of stressors, both positive and negative.  

I don't say any of the above to elicit any sympathy--I say it because these very types of transitions are the things that many of my clients have experienced also, and when they happen all at once or even just in rapid succession, they can really mess up your capacity to keep organized, or even to care very much about doing so (i.e., depression can set in). I have seen the result with my clients, and I hope my experience makes me an even better organizer as I recall my own sense of loss sometimes and how "discombobulated" I/ we felt! 

Fortunately, there were many factors that helped us walk through these things in health--not perfectly, not without pain and tears at times, and not without occasional marital tension, but nothing that was going to derail us.  Those helps included:

• A solid, abiding faith in Jesus, giving us spiritual direction to keep moving forward at each step, and being comforted and encouraged in that relationship.
  

• A deep commitment to each other as "allies", to encourage each other and overlook brief moments of impatience or miscommunication, realizing we were both experiencing a great deal of change and stresses of various types. We did a lot of talking, checking in on each other for emotional, physical, and spiritual "status" reports.

During all this activity I was working with a home organizing client who was also making a household move.  She told me that the week before the actual furniture-moving event she and her husband sat down with their kids and said, "Look, this weekend you may hear us yell at each other, and we may yell at you, too. But just remember, it's not because we don't love you or each other--this is a very stressful time. Just a heads up..." 😉😀  I found that an incredibly refreshing and delightful way to prepare for what was ahead with a realistically practical and thoughtful approach.

• A solid network of incredible friends and family who prayed for us, talked with us, and physically helped us, e.g., offering us their homes as an interim location after selling the house, allowing us to store our belongings with them rather than having to put it all in a storage unit, spending precious time with us before we left town, helping us pack/unpack the truck... it was awesome!!

• A clear designation of responsibilities for the process--I was primarily responsible to: 

• Pack, inventory, and organize household belongings
  
• Manage the basics of cooking, shopping, cleaning, and laundry
  
• Complete change of address for mail services
  
• Line up new insurance coverage in Florida
  
• Plan the travel itinerary / meals, including co-piloting during the drive
  

 Bud handled:

• Administrative details of transitioning utilities, insurance, financials, internet services, etc., from old to new residences
  
• Arrange for moving truck (took us a while to figure out whether to pay moving companies or do it ourselves)
  
• Continue to work part-time at TWO jobs
  
• Pack truck, and 
• All the driving

SO, we got here.  😀😛🙌  We planned for 7 days of travel, never having driven a moving van with a car in tow before.  I had lined out 2 itineraries, but in the end we did a hybridized version, and arrived 2 days early.  Friends we had made on our scouting trip in December of 2021 (owners of the AirBnB we had stayed in) met us at the house and helped us empty the truck, and said to us as they were leaving that day, "Don't think you're alone here--we're here for you, and you can call on us."  They meant it, and we knew it, and it was so encouraging!! 

We moved in on a Monday afternoon and had the approximately 80 boxes unpacked by Thursday.  Friday Bud went out and arranged the garage, while I set to cleaning windows.  

Over the next two weeks we took things off the walls, changed out light fixtures, started posting things on Craigslist and Marketplace, got our driver's licenses and many other residency matters settled, cleaned up some things outdoors, restocked the frig, and bought a lot of things for the house...too much time on Lowe's and Home Depot websites!! 😖 We also met neighbors and were deeply grateful for their friendliness and their physical help when needed. We settled in enough that both of us were able to get back to remote work the second week in the house, too. Interestingly, there are still moments of asking each other, "Now, where are we keeping ____ in this house?!"  Still adjusting to the new "map" of where things are...

Then we began painting the interior, which took 2 weeks.  I hadn't done actual painting with a roller in our previous homes but had helped with taping off, edging, cleanup, etc.  Although we had already determined while looking at them online that any home we chose was going to get new paint, it was still rather overwhelming, and Bud was not looking forward to it. There were so many things to be attended to, it seemed...This time I was determined to learn how to do the painting so I could take some weight off of Bud and shave off the hours he would spend at the task. 

It was a great new skilled gained! But it was very physical and  tiring, and by the end of the 2 weeks I was more than ready to lay down the roller...  

 I made quite a paint-y mess of myself the first day 😕😏😂 and had a pretty streaky outcome (IMHO) on my first space--a closet.  Later when Bud came to check it out I said, "It's a good thing this is just a closet, and that I'm not doing this professionally--I'd be fired, I think!"  He looked at it, laughed, and then he said, "Nope, it's not you, it's the paint--just needs a 2nd coat."  What a relief!  By the end of the 2nd day I had things pretty well figured out and a good system in place.  And about 25 gallons of paint later......the house finally felt much more like home to us, brighter, cleaner, and fresher.

As many physical house changes and each administrative task of some kind or other were completed, the stress levels were dropping.  After one month, we had our first dinner guests--a thank you to the family who so graciously helped us moving our things off the truck-- and we're beginning to establish some other connections. We are exploring churches to find a new church family and putting community holiday events on the schedule, looking forward to enjoying many of the beauties of living in Florida. 

Next post, more of the details of the packing process...