They need not be nearly as hard as most folks make them. Doing both simultaneously can be double daunting, but there is logic behind a smoother path.
You need two words. The first is Purge, next is Plan. They are nearly interchangeable. They are fact. They are reversible for Purge/Plan in moving and Plan/Purge for a remodel. Complexity varies with distance, to ignore either spells yet another word: Perilous.
Rarely is a move a surprise. Make time your ally. Begin SMALL to large, outside the house and beneath the house, first. WHAT? Yes.
Your furnishings will not make a killer move, the other stuff of life, WILL.
The agony of unpack and settle at a new locale isn't about Granny's armoire, or your lumpy brown leather couch or what to do about the piano nobody plays.
It is about every single blasted doo dad you own, from paper clips, pens, pencils, to power cords, photos framed or other. Bed sheets to bath supplies, tools and toys, books, bottles, brooms and brushes, baby blankets of old, trash and treasure, and ALL of it will lurk in every single basement, garage, every cupboard, every closet, drawer, in every room you own.
You methodically pick a location, outside/inside one at a time, and yes, you rid yourself of every darn thing you do not need, want, or consider necessary to life as you know it. You decrease abundance in categories. Do you need 150 colored markers? Thousands of photos nobody has glanced at in decades? Books, nobody wants to read a second time?
What about all that 19.99 discount store crapola in your basement, "not bothering anyone". HAH! It has to be packed!
Movers: A "mover " will pack a leftover soap wafer or a Coke can left in a bedroom, in a box the size of a cage for your huge dog, replete with enough paper around each to cover earth. You will p.a.y for all of it, and will deal with it at your destination: (
DON'T pay, p.u.r.g.e. Pack as you purge, anything you do not need for current living. Don't let movers pack smalls, especially those non breakable. It always sounds good, it never IS good. At the very least, you don't want them packing whatever you don't w.a.n.t. Whatever can be packed in clear totes, duct taped closed ? Do it. Bed linens, soft decorative items, plastic toys, folded clothes and ONLY those things you need and want. Label "what and to where", and the words now and later.
The now and later words: You don't need table top photos, books, decorative doo dads, Christmas ornaments the first days of entering a new address. You need time. You need your kitchen, but not ALL of it - you aren't baking Xmas cookies, any cookies, the first week in a new home.
Use the garage, any room in the house you can dedicate to "later unpacking" . Stage three garage walls with "later" . Later does not mean more than a single week, it usually means just a couple days.
Local moves are a bonus. Drive what you can. That means LAMPS and their shades, number what goes with what! the "later" of a kitchen, the important paper of life and more. Art, mirrors, photo gallery etc? You can not hang a darn thing until furniture is placed. Don't let a mover put these in your path. Find "elsewhere" and use it until you have an arrangement of the big stuff . Nothing but nothing is worse than WEEKS of " boxes and whatever" and you mutter over and over....."Oh, so sorry, pardon our mess, we just moved in last month! " You don't need a month, you need a few days at most.
The longer you were in one residence, the more you may have. But I will guarantee one thing from experience and so many moving clients, and I have lost count in three decades plus...minor to massive size dwelling:
You can be settled in the new place to the last picture nail in a wall, within three days max, if you do the purge, the now, and the later. Believe it.
Remodel
DON'T even contemplate it without a plan.
Yes, it is tempting to demo a hideous kitchen, a bath. No. You never, ever, do this.
It is laughably common, (just here on this site), how very often raw courage overtakes contemplation.
"Can we see a picture of the original condition of this"?
"No.......we demo'd and this is what we have, the cabinets are all ordered, and now we're not sure if this will fit on this wall!? , we may have goofed."
No matter the kitchen the bath, the addition...everything begins with the plan from budget, from feet and inches, to what goes where. To having every major element chosen, on order, on the way. Contracts, everything in writing included.
Doubly dangerous? The recent concept of "I can endure no disruptions, ever. I must create House Beautiful before a move in. I've lived with ugly for ten years, I MUST have a new whatever it is, in eight weeks, or I will hang myself."
Equally common? You did "plan" ! You have it all. Oh.....indeed! You have a dining room or living room with EVERY single piece of junk that came out of your kitchen. Every grime encrusted , stained who knows what....and you're living in a drywall dust nightmare.
You never purged, you never PURGED boxed, crated, carted to the basement, covered , all you will NOT need in a kitchen remodel which is eighty percent of what usually lives in your kitchen. You waited until two days prior to a contractor at your doorstep, you have a grungy garage full of who knows what. Your door is hanging open, the flies are buzzing and you are living in what can only be described as pure hell.
Again.......the purge word. She's boring me.....!!
I'll end with this:
Never in any time prior, have people owned the massive amount of consumer goods found in the most common of American homes.
Every generation leaves a past: and the past grows ever more abundant. More is purchased with a click than be imagined....every holiday is a MAJOR holiday and it isn't enough to honor it, decorate for it.....you have to DECORATE!!!. Much of it will be everlasting "faux" and too little of it will be put back into the earth.
I'm not the ownership policeman. Nobody can tell you the should or should not of possessions.
But remodels of late, moves of late, from just my own clients..... makes me want two things only.
Contractor bags, and a dumpster. For every single one of them: )
Have at it kids!
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