Frolicking

I wore my hooded down parka today to spend a couple of hours moving junk around the garage today (or supervising the movement thereof).

There’s nothing as bad as trying to pack up the miscellany of a garage. It’s all strangely shaped or heavier than iron (because it is iron) or filled with toxic or flammable chemicals. How do you pack that?

And we’re experiencing winter temperatures for the first time in, well, a season, so there’s that. Ahem.

Fun times.

All is not lost, however. Later, as I was digging through 700 photos I took last summer while on an epic European family vacation looking for the perfect one for my holiday cards, I ran across this beauty. And I thought I’d share. Because readers in the northern hemisphere who were shopping today (or moving the stuff they’d once purchased around the garage), might enjoy it.

Ahh, the Croatian coast. In June. Lovely.

The first step towards getting somewhere is deciding you’re not going to stay where you are

Minnesota Transplant is bustin’ a move.

With a few swings of a rubber mallet, the house went on the market today.

Oh, wait. There was quite a bit more involved than just erecting the “for sale” sign.

Like going through every room, closet and drawer to clear clutter and once again put the emphasis on the house again instead of our stuff.

Since we no longer need four bedrooms, we’re downsizing. A lot. And that meant not just packing things up (though I did a lot of that), it meant getting rid of stuff.

I said hello to Marie Kondo’s decluttering method of sparking joy and goodbye to seven carloads of stuff which I joyfully carted to Goodwill and uncounted bags of garbage. I no longer needed seven boxes of books, 18 belts, and more dog toys than the weight of my dog (and you should have seen the paper files I brought to the industrial shredder — oh my!). It feels good to be lighter.

But that sort of life-changing magic takes time. Lots of time. Which is why you haven’t heard much from Minnesota Transplant in that past six weeks.

But I have done a little writing, and if you’re interested in seeing how a real estate agent would describe the house I called a home for the past nine years, check out the website I created to inspire some interest: www.318whiteoak.com. (Oh, any hey, if you know anyone looking to put down roots in northern Illinois, please pass this link along!).

Eventually, the house will sell and Minnesota Transplant will transplant herself again. But my roots might not be so deep. Stay tuned.