Chapter 3: Movin’ on Out & Good-bye

Eloise’s dollhouse shows how packing felt!

We started packing up our belongings and selling items locally and on line/ebay in March 2016. Our house was officially on the market in February. I had anticipated that I would have at least until summer to get all moved out so my packing pace was best described as ‘slow and steady’. Packing up a 3000+ square foot house to move into a 5^th wheel was a daunting task even when you have helpers. Lucky for us (unlucky for me) our house was under contract starting in April and was sold by the end of May which significantly shortened my packing timetable and increased our packing anxiety! We decided to store a portion (read: tractor trailer sized amount) of our favorite belongings and items that were not selling at the price we wanted. I am not a pack rat (my husband may disagree) but we had a house FULL of items and I was not yet at the mental point that I could part with everything that we had worked so hard to ‘get.’ (What if we need those items in the future?) We did sell or give away a large amount of items and that was a good cleansing process in and of itself.

Empty house

As we embark on this adventure we wanted to say thank you to everyone who helped us prepare along the way. A million thanks to those who helped us pack up our old home and set up our new home, who helped us make repairs and do installations, who were kind enough to store items for us, and of course those who babysat while we did all of those things. Of course we will miss Maine and will be back to visit next spring.

Saying good-bye to Great Grammy!