We are remodelers...we always love to buy homes that need a lot of TLC and bring them back or make them into something that they always had the potential to become. My husband is a contractor and I am an avid remodeler/crafter/idea generator of everything (much to my husbands pleasure and dismay....depending).
SO, we just made our last move ( so we say). Moving gets harder as you get older and since you have acquired more and more stuff each year, decisions have to be made about what to do with all of your things. I tried to use the "need" or "want" theory as I worked my way though all of our possessions. Most of the time things fell into the in between gray area and I kept it 'just in case'.
We moved from a 5 bedroom, 3 bath, living room, family room, sun porch, two kitchens and several other rooms that we called music room, library or offices in SE Wisconsin. It was a little larger than average sized home to begin with but with some excavation of the lower level (ground level on three sides) this level became another full sized home, do we doubled the amount of sq. ft. We thought for awhile of opening an Adult Family Home (in this home). I had worked in that field for a number of years and thought that I could continue providing care for mostly independent individuals at our home since we definitely had plenty of room and I enjoyed the profession. But after some more discussion and meeting a few potential residents and their families we decided that we really loved our privacy and that I could just continue working in the profession that I was in (working at CBRF's) to fulfill my choice of work. But, now we had two complete homes in our home...so, we filled them with furniture (first because of the possibility of an Adult Family Home), and then, because we had more usable space so, being collectors, refinishers, recyclers (hoarders) we filled it with furniture we were going to refinish and sell, I expanded my giant collection of future crafts to sell and just generally delighted in acquiring things we liked. We also had a barn full of sheep, llamas, chickens and peacocks and lots of things we acquired and could keep outside. AND, a huge machine shed/shop where my husband had all of his tools and of course, more stuff.
We had purchased a sweet victorian home in the UP Michigan about 8 years ago (as a 2nd home/vacation home) that we would travel to a few times a year...we really grew to love the area. So, we decided to look for some land in that area to eventually move to and take our animals and all of our stuff. Well, we found a perfect piece of land, with a pond and an old log cabin from the 1800's (we love challenges). Our large home in WI was finally ready to put on the market after years of work, so we listed it and hoped that it would sell within a year. Well, we had several offers almost immediately and it sold very quickly. SO, here we are, all this stuff. We bought a semi container and hired companies to haul our heavy equipment (husbands) and made many drives up to the property with a large, enclosed trailer. And now we are here...still in kind of a 'what the hell' shock. We had three closings within two weeks (2 in Michigan and 1 in Wisconsin). I know that when you list a property, the intention is to sell but when it happens it is hard to click out of the 'selling mode' into 'it's sold mode' when it all happens so quickly....because now you really are moving and within a pretty short period of time.
Here we are in Michigan, with all of our stuff, it's winter and 20 degrees outside. My husband has done his darnedest to make it livable as far as mechanical things. The log cabin had been used as a camp for many years so no running water or toilet, etc. After we hauled out the 1,000 beer cans, empty cigarette cartons, bullet casings and just generally a 20 yd. dumpster full of useless stuff..I painted what could be painted and with rugs, pictures, some furniture, tried to make it as much of a home as possible. (we will be adding a bedroom in the spring....we currently sleep and eat and do everything else in one medium sized room. We do have a separate bathroom...thank you very much husband). We did get an old beautiful cook stove and a large wall of glass cabinets that came with the log cabin that were probably in an old home or business at some point in time and the cook stove was used for heat. Otherwise, we have just hauled and hauled stuff out of the attic, the basement and the log cabin. Oh and, there is a mobile home on the property also and guess what, it's full...fortunately, structurally, it's not in bad shape. We hauled out a lot of stuff and into the dumpster and refilled with our stuff that we don't really need in the log cabin at the moment (because we will be doing flooring, etc.)
Laundry....that's another issue. Our water needs to be tested and filtered....working on that. In the meantime, we drink and cook with bottled water. So, no washing our clothes in the lovely gold colored water. When we were just about out of clean clothes, we would head out to the local laundromat and get to relive what we did when we lived in apartments and had small kids....the hauling of dirty laundry, the hanging out at the laundromat and then the re hauling into the house of clean laundry. The prices have certainly gone up.... nothing like loading 8.00 worth of quarters into a big front loader. The first time we headed out to a laundromat we tried a local laundromat that had a For Sale sign in the window. The washers seem to work just fine, but when it came time to dry...we were down to one dryer (the others were either marked "Out of Order", "Do not use" or they just blew cold air (we found out after pumping a few quarters in). So, several hours later we vowed to look for another laundromat until we could get set up at home. Here are some of the lovely old signs in the local laundromat..I.love them!
