May I recommend taking leftover Chinese food and adding it to scrambled eggs? SO GOOD. The best egg-addition so far, I think, is leftover Kung Pao Chicken: the chicken, the celery, the peppers, even the peanuts—plus don’t forget to put in the sauce. It coats the eggs just perfectly. And put in a spoonful of leftover rice too. Then eat until you feel sick because it is so delicious you can’t stop.
I have for whatever reason stopped being super-anxious about the new house and also stopped being super-sad about leaving this house. It took about two weeks—and also I had to say to Suddenly-Cold-Footed Paul that we could think seriously one more time about backing out, but after that we needed to stop thinking of it as an option or I was going to lose my mind.
Now I am regular anxious (“So much to do!” “What if the utilities at the new house are so high it makes us cry?” “We are going to have to figure out what to do about X and Y…and W and B and Q”) and regular sad (“All the things we had done to this house thinking we’d be here maybe forever!” “I remember washing this wall when I was 32 weeks pregnant with William” “The next person is not going to love this weird Frankenkitchen the way I do”), plus a nice amount of excited and enthusiastic. I am planning multiple New House events: having my wine-and-appetizers group over to drink a toast in every room; having extended family over for pizza and a tour and a game of Sardines; maybe a more general housewarming where we invite everybody we know for cocktails and snacks (do people still do housewarmings?). It’s going to be fun. It’s good to do new things. I am going to say it until I believe it. It’s already working a little!
If the new owners don’t love the FrankenKitchen, they’ll get a contractor and make it into Franken 2.0. It will be fine.
I think the new memories you’ll make will be so much more fun than the old ones!
Wait, so this is a sure thing now? No longer a Possible Move?
It’s still Possible Move since there are many places a deal can fall through in the six weeks or so between offer and closing—but each step we complete makes it more certain, and at this point there aren’t many places left for it to fall through.
https://www.petfinder.com/dog/rebecca-41443167/il/huntley/animal-house-shelter-il192/
I have, like, no idea where in the Midwest you are, so I just picked my mom’s hometown as a starting point for my daily Petfinder indulgence.
Yay!!!!!! I feel happy about this. (Mostly the house. Less the eggs.)
I threw myself a housewarming and then was surprised everyone brought gifts. I had fforgotten that was a part of a housewarming party.
Oh, PRESENTS. I am glad you mentioned this. I would be embarrassed if people brought presents! Hm, I will have to think of another way to spin it. Maybe just a general party for some other reason and then oh-let-us-give-you-a-tour-of-our-new-house-while-you’re-here!
You could do a stock the bar party, but maybe those are popular with my friends bc we’re all in our early 30s, childless and like to drink a lot. 😂
We did open houses instead of housewarmings. It was more of a we want to show you our new place and feed you, rather than bring us presents. Depending on when you move you could do a holiday theme or something. I think calling it a open house for “showing off” reasons tones down the whole “oh we have to bring a gift” type thing.
Seconding the open house idea. It’s more “come play looky-loo and only stay as long as you want to” and less “official present-bringing occasion.”
Housewarming parties are still a thing! My BFF threw one for me when I bought my home, so I have done the same when other friends have purchased theirs. I love the idea of keeping this up as more friends or family buy homes.
I couldn’t get past the first two sentences without feeling compelled to recommend Knorr’s chicken flavored rice with an over-easy egg on top. Shockingly, my picky, trying out vegetarianism daughter will actually eat this.
Also, a conversation I just had with a coworker today spurs me to remind you to take pictures. It’s so neat to have something changed and think about how it used to look, but then those memories kind of fade. Years later you will find an odd photo and say, “Wow! I forgot that’s how it was before!” But in order for that to happen, you have to actually take the photo in the first place.
Yes! We took pictures everywhere, inside and outside, with all the staged furniture. It’s fun to look through that album and remember falling in love with the house for the first time, and then to look around and see all the changes since then.
I think toasting each room would be a lot of fun. It’s a tour, it’s a drinking game, it’s a reason to unpack everything. And I’d forgotten about housewarming gifts. Do it!
Yaay!! Does this mean that you have put in an offer, etc? Such a big step.
Can I just share with my own freakout which is that our family MAY have the opportunity to move overseas for my husbands job. It would be to eastern Europe, and it would be temporary, and it could be awesome in many ways (let’s vacation… anywhere in Europe!!) but holy goodness the possibility has thrown me into a tizzy. We have a four year old and a baby and I don’t even know where to begin with the logistics.
Yes, offer conditionally made and conditionally accepted, and now we’ve put in our inspection-based requirements and are waiting for seller response to those, but we think it’s likely those will be accepted as well.
Oh my gosh overseas would be the ULTIMATE MOVE.
Yes to the housewarming party! Once a date is set, it is such a great motivator to get things in order. It is exciting to think about guests seeing/admiring the new place, with the bonus of being pushed into action to make it look lovely in a timely fashion. The alternative, for me, is hemming and hawing about not wanting to make unpacking and decorating decisions for fear I won’t do my “new love of a house” the justice it deserves. I made this mistake with our last move. I wanted the party, but never planned a thing. I worry now it would just seem silly to tour people around my beloved old house, which has finally been unpacked and curated. But oh how badly I want somebody to admire my hard work and design skills, damnit! Yes to a housewarming party!!
Ooh! You could have the housewarming and in lieu of gifts, ask for donations to the local food bank/soup kitchen. My local soup kitchen likes to get tools/storage stuff/serving stuff.
there are things you will miss, but the new adventures and discoveries will out-weigh them!!
We have a saying in my house that “everything goes good with scrambled eggs.”
I’m totally going to offer some unsolicited advice. You have plenty of children and family in the area, so you may feel like “it will be so EASY to just take our time and move ourselves. Oh, it will be FUN. I don’t want other people to touch our stuff. With this many people, it would almost be LAZY if we didn’t move ourselves. It is just across town. It will be so expensive; I could save the money and buy some really nice blinds.”
No, no, no. I’ve moved too often now to fall prey to these absurd ideas. Hire packers. Let them pack everything and move it to the new house. Opt to pay them to unpack everything and take the boxes too.
Save your energy for other, really fun projects in the new house.
Seconded. Hire people.
Yes 100 million times. I do understand if you don’t have the money to hire the people, but it was the only way my marriage survived on our 5 move in less than 10 years.
My one piece of advice is to brace yourself for selling your old house. Maybe we were unlucky, but–my house was in decent-but-not-perfect shape, and selling was pretty difficult. And dealing with agents and buyers and and replacing/fixing things… it’s been both expensive and gloomy. If we ever move away from our current house, I’m half tempted to just say “as-is sale,” put a lower price on it, and accept that we won’t be profiting as much as we could. Selling really, really sucked.
Or if you can swing it financially, you could keep your old house and rent it out (depending on what the market is like where you are). We did that with our move earlier this year. It was a lot of work to get the house ready for renters, but now that they are in, we’re enjoying having their rent pay for the mortgage+. Also, with money tied up in mortgages, colleges are less likely to say “we’ll take that!”