Portmanteau Suitcase

After several months of back-and-forth on what to do (rent vs buy), SMS and I have moved to a brand-new rental apartment. It’s very freeing to have made a decision and it makes me feel a little more established in my post-Navy, mid-career transition life. I’m also excited to have my stuff but before I get ahead of myself…

After a few weeks of back-and-forth with the leasing office, SMS and I signed a lease for a top-floor, 2B/2B apartment. It’s a beautiful, brand-new place and though the staff is slightly disorganized, we were able to get most things sorted out. Enough that we felt comfortable signing the lease, so that was a great relief.

We moved out of the old apartment last weekend. We were completely out, cleaned, and inspected by late Sunday afternoon and it felt great. The cleaning is always a chore. The deep clean stuff that I always put off until the move? Yes, we had some of that. I have a half-hearted resolution to deep clean the stovetop every 2 months or so. And by “or so,” I mean the next time we move. We do wipe the crumbs up- we’re not savages. But over time, the burners get a little grimy and that’s the part that neither one of us are that great at noticing/caring.

Also, the hero of the move was the little dolly that we borrowed from our old place’s property manager. OMG. Total lifesaver. Runner-up with the bellhop style trolley at our new place.

The anti-hero of the move was the cargo van. Even though I felt indestructible driving it, I wish I had ordered the small truck instead so we could have done one trip instead of three. We didn’t have a lot of furniture, but the loading was a little awkward due to the wheel wells. I did like the back up camera, which I didn’t notice until 2/3 of the way through the move.

There was one tragic accident among the houseplants.

So, yes, the old apartment was cleaned out and all the stuff was in our new apartment. It was a little cluttered and messy, but the impending wave of doom was looming.

Yes, the delivery of my household goods shipment. I knew it would be a lot to fit in the apartment and this was 100% correct. Our movers were great- really nice, efficient, careful, and down-to-earth. We also got lucky in that they came relatively early, which meant they were done by 2:30. This was great because we had scheduled a flight to San Diego that evening for Christmas weekend.

So, yes, a Christmas weekend away in beautiful San Diego. This will be followed by a short workweek and significant dedication to decluttering and organizing the apartment. I have a (terrible) idea for decluttering- give SMS and I ten minutes each to throw out as much of the other person’s stuff as possible. I came up with this since it’s so easy to identify what is “extra” among the other person’s stuff while it’s so difficult to part with “memories” of my own. Don’t worry- we’re not actually going to do that. But it is a viable alternative to the “just burn the rest” mindset I usually reach at some point in the packing/unpacking process.