Where do I even begin…?
Well, if you read or re-read #43, you know that after two years in our 3rd forever home, we decided once again to sell and move on. There’s an entire entry on justifying this decision. But I mean really. I think it’s a sickness we have that we move all...the...time. We did spend 10 years in one house in Sparks, NV; and 8 years in our house in Elverta, CA. But in 2021 that only accounts for 18 out of 43 years. We have rented three times, purchased and sold 9 houses and lived in the RV 3 separate times. That is 15 moves in 43 years. You can't say the James' let the grass grow under our feet 😂. Each move had a purpose. Two of the rentals and two rv stints were waiting for our forever house to be found or built. I’m sorry... that’s forever houses, plural🙄🤦♀️. I think, at this point, you could say we are true experts in the field. Or so you would think…
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| The dream home pool |
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| The dream home |
Lets start by reviewing the sale of our beautiful home in Goodyear AZ so we could move to our current place (the newest forever home) in Wickenburg Ranch, AZ; where the Roloff's live.
Ah, the house in Goodyear. You remember. The one that used to be a model home. The one I filled my Facebook page with pictures of.
Had a pool, Ramada, fancy landscaping, a zillion upgrades. Even came fully furnished. Yep, that one. I remember thinking when we bought it that there is no way we will ever leave this place. It's perfect.
But so we could live in small town cowboy country amongst like minded older folk, the latest perfect dream home went on the market. Aaaaaand it sold in one day. One freakin’ day. I had planned on it sitting on the market awhile. Waiting for it to sell would give us ample time to purge and pack what we didn't need for staging or living. But no. One flipping day was all it took. We had to bust our asses to get out of that place. We are too damn old for ass busting.
LJ rented a 5x10 storage unit, climate controlled, so we could keep valuable items, paperwork and other various things we might need access to while RV living. Everything else was going with the movers. Once again, like in 2017, he limited me to one storage unit. Limit what we keep with us. Only keep necessary items. Just as a side note, about two weeks into it he rented a second one for his stuff…gotta take tools, ladders and atv stuff. Plus he realized I left him no room in the original unit 🤣. Hey, I decided to keep accessible craft stuff and puzzles in case I got bored. Yep…that could have gone with the movers. Good grief.
What I truly found interesting with all of this was LJ's willingness to hire the movers to pack everything. Seriously? In my mind I was thinking and maybe I said it out loud (you know I did 🤣), “What about allllll those other times we moved and you didn't want to pay for that? OHHHHH that's right. Those other big moves I did all the packing because you were conveniently on some ATV trip right in the middle of it all. This all happened literally overnight so you didn't have time to conveniently plan one so now you have to help. Sorry babe.” Now having movers pack made perfect sense. Men…😂👍.
In truth it was a life saver. I'm too damn old to be doing this shit. I get tired. I hurt. I get frustrated. So hiring movers to pack was perfect. However...me being me, I did pack up all my crafts and important things myself. I just didn't trust them completely. Plus they weren't coming in to pack us and move us until the end of the month. Notice I said I.
Anyway, scheduling them to come in was when we discovered another minor...could have been major...oops. We always have “oops” or “wtf “or “gee, didn’t see that coming” when we make life changes. It’s the James way.
Even better… we didn't discover it. Annie Roloff did. Thank you ANNIE! She apparently was gossiping about us to Tom when she realized we hadn't lived in the Goodyear house very long, just under two years. If you don't live in your primary home for 24 months out of so many years, you pay capital gains taxes. Depending on who you talk to it could be a lot or a little, but still it's money you give Uncle Sam that you don't need to if you're smart. So we did the math and discovered we were a bit shy of the two years based on the closing date. Fortunately our buyers were forgiving and let us push back the closing a few days so we could avoid any taxes. Another "why do we always do this crap" issue avoided...truly thanks to Annie.
The delay actually helped with another stupid move we made. Had we known we were going to buy a house that hadn’t been built, we never would have sold our toy hauler to buy a fancy trailer. The toy hauler with its two living areas, two bathrooms and outside tv was a far better full time living choice. But no. We sold it in April to buy a fancier “regular RV” to travel with since we were finally settled in the forever house. Of course the new trailer wasn’t going to be here until a couple weeks before closing. Timing is everything, and we suck at it. Stress level would have been soooo much lower if we just hadn’t made that decision. But that’s for the next chapter…
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| Destiny RV Park |
Thankfully, our RV arrived just in time for the movers to empty out our house. We parked it next to the house so we could load it up and so we had a place to sleep. Plus we had to wait for the rv slot to open up. Fortunately we were able to get into Destiny RV where we had stayed during LJs cancer time. They were so nice (plus the gal that runs the place has a crush on LJ) so they found us a spot with no move out date. We could stay in one place until the house was done.
Back to the packing:
It’s amaaaaaazing how much stuff you can accumulate in just two years. This house had storage so there was no reason I couldn't fill it! Puzzles, craft stuff, knick knacks and what nots. Seriously. We moved in with a small trailer full of boxes and now we needed movers to pack us up.
So I started in the closet:
Just like in 2015 and 2017 we would be rv living so I was limited in clothing I could take. I remember going through the closet and thinking this should be quick. Instead another WTF moment. I have done this so many times and yet still had several bags of clothes to go to Goodwill. Not good clothes, mind you. Nope, just a plethora of Walmart t-shirts. Blog #3 refers to my addiction to $9 t-shirts. I obviously had not kicked the habit.. Somewhere there has to be a support group. At least in Arizona there’s a happy thrifty wearing one of my lovely tees with an inappropriate saying on it.
And shoes....I wear one pair of flip flops and one pair of tennis shoes with the occasional slip on BOB's from Skechers. Why do I have 12 pairs of tennis type shoes? Many worn only once. Probably because they were cute and on sale. So some to the thrift store; some to pack and three that I’ll never wear to take..just in case.
LJ wasn't much better with his stuff. He had enough Levis that no longer fit him to dress a homeless village. Shirts, too. After he lost all his weight from the cancer diet, he just never purged his clothes. By the time he was done even he had a few donation bags. I have to admit I was smirking just a little after all the grief I endured last time.
On to the rest of the house. Bear with me. Theres a lesson here:
LJ called a thrift store and they bought outright most of the furnishings we had and a lot of the decor items. It was all model home stuff so no monetary loss there. That saved us from having to deal with garage sales or marketplace. I set aside a few things I liked. We kept a queen size bed and our King bedroom set. Kept a couple of dressers and the couches. Sold everything else. Gave a bunch of crap away to the neighbors from the garage. Literally gave our frig and Washer Dryer to the neighbor across the street for him to give a friend. Again.. was all model home stuff so we had no investment in it. Later the neighbor did tell me he ended up selling them so we split the money. He wanted to give us all of it, but heck...he sold it so he deserved some of it.
Kept some of the outside furniture; left the fancy pool lounges for the new people. Set aside all my tacky yard art for the movers.
Now, I know you are thinking yea.. so...
Welllll… the movers packed it all up using twice as many boxes as I would have. They killed an entire forest with the amount of brown packing paper and boxes they used. Made no sense to me but they are the professionals…and they charge by the box 🤦♀️. They wrapped and protected the furniture we kept, loading it all into crates on the big ol semi parked out front. I’m sure we paid a shitload more to have our stuff packed up than if I had done it. Just in retrospect half of it should have never seen the inside of a box. I should have taken photos but I was busy directing every thing.
Let me explain the drawbacks of saving and storing things with the movers. You see, you think you are saving money because you don't have to rebuy stuff...but in reality it costs money. They charge you for the packing material. They charge you for their labor. Once on the truck, they go by weight. The more they take, the more it costs. The fact is we paid monthly storage for what was supposed to be 12 months, that ended up being 19 months (another story), for furniture and crap we didn’t need to keep. At least half of what we stored has since been donated or given away, and most right after we moved in 🤦♀️. In fact we sold some of the stuff to the moving crew🤣🤷🏼♀️. In retrospect alllll the furniture should not have been stored. All the cheap ass yard art should not have been stored. If you are moving from one place to another with a month or so in between, it makes sense. For what we paid in storage we could have all new stuff. Oh wait… we do have new stuff. So, in reality we paid to store stuff we have replaced with new stuff. Brilliant! Follow us for more stupid choices🤣.
Another recommendation: If you live in Arizona, I suggest not cleaning out garages and making moves during the intense heat of freakin' August. And I double that during record heat of 115 for days. You'd think I would have lost weight sweating as much as I did, but of course I did not. Fun times.
And poor Scooter! He is OCD like me. He was not happy with the boxes and crates everywhere. He’s not a fan of change. I felt so sorry for him. He loved his yard. I mean he’s very happy now but dang that was rough on him. Poor little guy. All we could do is show him love. He’d been through this twice before so he kind of understood it. But he didn’t like it.
We finally finished, making it just in time. Got the house emptied, cleaned and ready for the new people on closing day. Well almost. We were finishing up the garages when they came to get the keys. They were really nice about it. I think they felt sorry for us since that day was so far the hottest day of 2021. Record breaking. Of course it was. I'm not ever one to leave anything undone for the new folks. But sadly I broke my perfect streak with this move. I was sad for about a minute. Then I was just happy to get the fuck out and move on.
Next stop: the joys of rv living and house building. Write that later. I need a drink. This remembering makes my head spin as I look around at all the crap we’ve accumulated over the last year of living in the new house. Yep…slow learner 🤣🤣🤣
