WE HAVE A LOT OF CRAP!

And now it's all in boxes. It have taken us about ten days of packing to get everything off walls, shelves, ect. and boxed. We are moving on friday, just four days away, for the first time in FIVE YEARS. That's a lot of accumulation people!

We have done a LOT of spackling. We don't have the touch up paint for the living room and dining room, so we have avoided spackling over the years, a hole is better than a white splotch. When we took everything off the walls and removed hardware, some walls began to look like swiss cheese. We spent a few hours carefully spackling. Now our rooms look like they have a rash that is being treated with calamine or something.
We have donated of about a rooms worth of stuff to Salvation Army, and there are still things that as I am packing, I go, "I need to get rid of this." But it just seems so much easier to toss it in the box. Awful, I know. Most of the time, I have resisted and filled two more garbage bags. And there are somethings we are taking a long "just in case."

Packing has been tiring, it's my least favorite part. I worry about whether breakables are padded well enough and always have a little extra room that has to be filled in with filler. And then there are always those elusive items you keep forgetting to pack, or are odd shaped or defy categorizing. But now it is done. Well until Thursday when all those can't live withouts must be packed as well. Then I get to un-pack. Which actually is my favorite part.

We just put these two cabinet doors back up, I had loved having the open storage up there. We are trying to return everything to the way it was. There is some debate as to whether I should use the last of the pewter paint to paint these two doors or not.

We have only used used boxes. Our roommate gave us some of hers, we scrounged in alleys, Co-workers Jane and Richard gave us some and the CVS has been a great source here at the end. Mike loves hunting up boxes. We have a bet going on the number of them. Mike says 58 I say 65. Have no idea how we will count. We also used towels, clothes, and used packing materials. My fav has been the Real Simples I was going to recycle. Not quite as good as newspaper, but I have plenty of them and so tear out five pages at a time.

Our new apartment. It has been empty for a week now, but they refinished the floors, so the stickiness and fumes are just now starting to abate. This is the front room, looking south to the rest of the apartment. That is the front door on the left. This apartment lacks a lot of the charm our current apartment has because it looks to be built in the 60's or 70's, as far as I can tell from the kitchen and bathroom. But the kitchen is HUGE and I can't wait to try it out, ragardless of the orange floral wallpaper.
There are two very small bedrooms, this one with linolium floors we will be covering with Flor carpet tiles. There are lots of other things to be worked out, but it is a great little place. My favorite part?

What we call the sun room in the back. It looks to be a porch that they walled in to make an additional "bedroom." A great studio-like-space with lots of windows, looking out at the BACKYARD!!!