T Minus 504 Days: Lakeland Florida

My wife and I have started watching videos about moving to Florida in the evenings before heading to bed. We kinda know where we want to move to, but we could be easily swayed by better jobs and more affordable housing.

Lakeland Florida is a community that sits between Orlando and Tampa. Living in Lakeland would provide opportunities to tap into both city's job markets. We could have the benefits of living near Orlando and  having the job market for Tampa (which is the best in the state for computer jobs). It is listed as the 59th best places to live in the US with a low average housing cost.

We decided to watch several YouTube videos that talked about Lakeland.

We watched Cost Of Living in Lakeland.
Lakeland, city on the move
Lakeland, a great place to live
10 things to do in Lakeland
Goodbye Lakeland

After watching these, we decided Lakeland Florida was not for us. There isn't really isn't in Lakeland that interests us. Some of the big selling points of Lakeland is the architecture, which I don't care about. And the small town feeling, but it isn't a small town at all. Apparently there are many swans, which doesn't interest me because I am coming from an area with a lot of geese. It seems like the best parts of Lakeland are the things that are not in Lakeland (being close to Disney, Orlando, beaches, etc). We would be accepting Lakeland in exchange for relatively long work commutes.

I am sure there are people who live in Lakeland who could make a long list of things they love about it, but, I couldn't see anything interesting in the videos. I admit, I have never been to Lakeland, and, if I ever did visit Lakeland perhaps my thoughts would change. But I'm just not feeling it.

T Minus 509 days: Purging Work Mementos

I had a couple of hours after dinner so I grabbed a tote that had mementos from places I have worked. Whenever I leave a job, I empty the draws and the take stuff off the walls, put it in a box, and the things I want to keep go into my Work Memntos tote.  I put everything into several categories:

• Throw Away - if I looked at it, didn't remember it, it apparently didn't mean much to me
• Scan it and throw away - Making a computer picture of something is a great way to remember something without actually having to keep the item. I will have a picture of it that I can look at whenever I want. The pictures are stored in the cloud, so, they don't take up any room and I can revisit it from anywhere I am.
• Scan it and keep it - some items have value to me and I still want to keep it. Scanning it provides a bit of security in case the original ever gets destroyed.
• Keep it - Most of this category was kid art that I had hanging in my office. 
• Put it somewhere else - pictures went to the picture box

Kid art was a different thing to make a decision about. I can imagine the moments when my child was making that item, thinking about how happy I would be to get it, and thinking about how proud I would be of them. And then a birthday comes or father's day comes and they go get it from where ever they were hiding it, and bring it to me. And their eyes light up as I look at it and admire it.

And now I'm looking at it again, ready to throw it in the trash? Not today. Maybe in a future purging I'll feel differently, but, today? Kid art went into the keep it pile.

I found a 15 year old work phone directory and spent a few moments flipping through it. I found all these names that triggered memories, without that directory those memories would never have come to me. It seems very odd to keep a 15 year old work directory... but I decided to keep it. I'm sure I'll throw it away in a future pass through this material.

Another odd thing a kept: a small booklet containing quotes from people throughout history. I flipped through the booklet an read many really good quotes and decided to keep the booklet.

I took at 18 gallon tote that was half full, and reduced it to just a two folders of items (about two inches deep total). 

T-Minus 510 days: Eight Week Moving Checklist

My wife found THIS 8-week moving check list from PODS.COM. This is a very good list, however, I can't imagine trying to do everything for a move in only eight weeks! Nevertheless, the article provides some great ideas to think about.

For example;

Contract the local chamber of Commerce for the city you are moving to and request a new resident pack.

Create a floor plan of your new home and start figuring out where all your furniture is going to go. It would be good to know that huge dresser isn't going to fit in your new house BEFORE you move it thousands of miles.

Confirm with your insurance company that your possessions are covered during transit.

Plan for the proper disposal of some items such as chemicals, paints, batteries, and pesticides. You can't just throw them into the normal garbage.

These are just some of the great suggestions!

T Minus 509 Days: Never return home?

We didn't do any purging today. Instead, we watched various YouTube videos to get ideas about moving. We watched videos for packing, arranging moving companies, and checklists with all the things that have to be done as part of a move.

One video said something that hit me like a ton a bricks. The host said "On the last day, do a walk through to make sure you haven't forgotten anything because tomorrow you won't be able to return to the house."

Won't be able to return to my house?

I built this house. It started as a field. I worked with an architect to design it. A builder to construct it. I did work during and after the construction. Every corner of this house is there because I decided to put it there. The lights, fixtures, and locations of electrical outlets were all my decision. I finished most of the basement all by myself - adding walls, ceilings, and floors.

This house was built after many years of apartment living to save money. We pinched pennies and dreamed about a day when we would have a back yard for the kids to play in, and room enough for the kids to have friends over. When we finally signed the papers for the house? We all did a happy dance, a dance we had been planning to do for years.

I built this house 17 years ago to raise our children. I remember my kids driving their riding cars around the kitchen and banging into the walls. Children running down the halls screaming in joy. The noise that was so loud sometimes, but I told myself to enjoy it because someday I would miss it all. I remember the long conversations with my daughter in her bedroom. Playing video games with my sons in the living room. All of the holidays and decorating the house in ways that became tradition. My wife baking cookies in the kitchen. All of the incredible cakes my daughter made. My son coming home from school and telling me about his day. The birthday celebrations. The kids tumbling down stairs in excitement for Christmas. All the laughs and tears. All the great times and all the struggles. All the dreams that were made and broken. Life played out in this house.

How can I stand in this empty house in 509 days and look at everything one last time and not be devastated. I imagine I'll be haunted by the sounds of children laughing and playing that are no longer there. I can look at every mark on the wall, and every chip of missing wood, and I remember how and when it happened.  It will be one of the saddest days of my life.

I have moved five other times in my life. But never have  I lived in one place for so long. Never have I had the kinds of life connections and experiences like I have had in this house. After that last day, this will no longer be my house where my memories are made. It will be someone else's. There will be no more opportunities to do all the things with the house I've wanted to do. There will be no more Christmas pictures of the kids standing on the stairs. No more memories will be created here. Those last few days are going to be very emotional.

Purging T Minus 511 days:Totes for moving

I only had a few minutes to purge, so, I walked around looking for something. I found a tote in the toy room. When I opened it, I found some tools and some wood from my wood shop that were broken up. Apparently my 16 year-old was breaking up wood one day and just never cleaned up after himself. I don't know how long that tote has been sitting in the toy room like that. I emptied the tote and now we have one more empty tote! That is a huge accomplishment because we have 250 totes (yes, you read that right) in total to go through.

I have been buying 18 gallon totes every time they are on sale because I imagined totes would be better for moving than cardboard boxes. Recently, I read that Totes are perfect for storage but are horrible for moving. Apparently, totes will crack and break during moving where a cardboard box won't. I am very disappointed to hear this because I have a huge investments in totes! Regardless, I still plan to pack and move with totes (I just won't buy any more of them!).

511 days sounds like a lot of time, but there is so much that needs to do. I had a life and was very busy before purging became necessary, and now this is an add on. So far, I am hitting the low hanging fruit - all the easy stuff. I dread the days when I am going to have to make really difficult decisions about what goes to Florida and what wont.

Purging T-Minus 512 days: CDROM

I have a cabinet in the basement store room that is filled with CDROMs. The cabinet is filled with game CD's, program CD's, cdroms that come with new computers, audio CDs, and many many backups of computers, documents, videos, and pictures.

I decided to tackle the CD's and I filled an entire garbage bag! I had Windows 98 installation CDROMs and a bunch of Windows 98 games and programs. Old versions of Turbo tax that we buy every year. I had many ten and fifteen year old training CDROMs for my work. There were many music CDs I had created, but in the age of online streaming music, who listens to music CDs?

As I was purging, I came to realize that almost none of our computers have CDROMS anymore. Even if I wanted to use these CD's, I don't have many machines left that I use those CDs on.

Any CDROM that I created went into the garbage. Some of the CDROMs that were created by a manufacturer will go into a "free" bin at the spring yard sale, but most of them also went into the garbage..

Purging T-Minus 513 days: Video Tape Purge

My wife and I grew up in the age of the VHS video tape. We had hundreds... perhaps a thousand VHS video tapes. We displayed them proudly in our living room: three book shelves filled to the brim, double packed on every shelf.

And then came DVD. And Red Box. And online streaming. Today, I can stream almost any movie, and what I can't stream? I can rent for $3.99.

Perhaps ten years ago, we decided the shelves in our living room would be better served with decorations. We threw away hundreds of video tapes containing TV shows we had recorded. The family video tapes (including all of the treasured Disney videos) would stay in the living room. The rest (which was mostly my movies (war, action hero, and scifi) would be relocated to shelves in the toy room.

Fast forward ten years. While some of the videos were watched during those ten years (usually in the home gym while I was working out), most were not. And now... it is time to purge.

We decided that the first round of purge would not touch the family videos in the living room nor any DVD. What we would focus on is the hundreds of tapes in the toy room.

I decided to keep three of my favorite movies, any video tape that I recorded on with our video camera, and the 9-11 videos we recorded from when the world trade center fell. All of the videos that I had recorded TV shows and movies on? Garbage. All the store-bought movies would go to the yard sale, although we doubted anyone would buy a VHS tape. Maybe if we put $.25 on them?

We filled two large garbage bags with video tapes before decided the bags were too heavy and risked breaking, so, we introduced a third bag. There were a couple of movies that I was sad to see go because they were some of my favorites, but I just reminded myself "worse case? It is a $3.99 rental if I want to see it."