Lost My Enthusiasm

It's our last week in the house.  We spent this weekend packing up and taking over to my parents's house a lot of the big furniture.  We have our matresses, a TV stand and TV, a fish stand, and our kitchen table.  I'm wandering the house wondering what I'm supposed to do until it's that chaos of last minute getting things out of the house. I could weigh more stuff to take on the trip.  But I've honestly lost my enthusiasm for that.  I have five more people's dressers to weigh and account for, and I can't muster the energy for it.  I need to go through my plastic containers and see what would be useful on the trip, but I couldn't care less right now.  Pack the toiletries, or dump them?  Oh, what's easier?  So many things on my plate, so few I give a rip about doing. We're trying to eat our way through our pantry and freezer.  We already sold the big freezer, so it's not as daunting a task as it could be.  The pantry is emptying out as well, but there's still a bunch of stuff in it.

That just doesn't seem like a ton for a family of seven, but at the same time, it's staring me in the face every day.  Some of it just has to go to the 'rents' place.  Can't help it.  No way to eat 15+ pounds of rice this week.  No.Way.  What about the bread flour I haven't used in forever?  That can probably be tossed.  The whole wheat flour?  So sad, but that's a goner, too.  AP flour?  Yeah, that's hittin' the road with us.  Why the hell do I still have so many flours?  Oh, I have cake flour, too.  And corn meal.  The cake flour will be used to make some truly bangin' cookies (they are so darn tasty), if the urge overcomes me.  I do so love those cookies.  That urge may actually materialize!

I need to get on packing up the final stuff so I can get down to cleaning.  My least favorite thing.  Possibly.  I may dislike other things more, but this is what's on my plate now and I have no appetite for it.  I'm taking applications for those interested in donating their time and skill in cleaning this joint!

Packing It Up

Moving boxes are expensive.  Truly, expensive.  Back in September Bill and I talked about it and agreed we would have to sell the house.  It was at that point that I began the task of downsizing and packing things away.  My favorite store (at this point in my life) is Costco.  Before we moved from VA, I searched online for Costcos and did my house search around that.  And now, all these many years later, it has been so beneficial.  While I've been using their boxes for years as a way to distribute popcorn at Boy Scout selling time, this time around I needed boxes that had lids.  Most of the boxes there have their lids cut off or never had any lids to begin with.  BUT, the food court and the bakery keep their lids.  Ice cream boxes, churro boxes, pizza ingredient boxes...all are awesome.  They work so well for books and other heavy stuff, because they're kinda small.  For bigger boxes, you have to head to the bakery.  They break theirs down, so you have to tape them back up, but they're also fantastic.

We have so many of these lining shelves in my parents' basement.  I have 25 boxes of homeschooling materials alone.  Now, not all of those are in these boxes, but a great many are.

I am so grateful that our friends at Costco told us to check with the bakery.  They don't bring their boxes up front like all the other boxes, so we had never seen then.  As we were clearly gathering boxes for a move, one of the ladies at the exit gave us that tip.  Bill promptly checked with them.  We had to coordinate a time to pick them up, because they break them down and then put them out to recycle, so we had to come back when they were breaking down so we didn't interrupt their flow.   I am so very thankful that Costco allows us to take boxes.  We have a large liquor store across the street from us that has posted signs saying they no longer hand out boxes for moving.  What a shame.  On the spectrum of reduce/reuse/recycle, reuse is better than recycling.  I can use what's already made, I don't need more energy to convert it to something else, there's no waste...  So thank you, Costco, for being such a wonderful company!!!