I know, it’s crazy, right? A month ago, less than that, moving wasn’t even in my sight line. Now I’m sitting here in a room stripped of pictures and spotted with boxes and the occasional gaps where certain pieces of furniture have already migrated or been doomed to garage sale humiliation. (Toy Story has ruined me, I feel guilty about everything now. “No, but I really did enjoy our acquaintance bread maker. It isn’t you, it’s me. I just… don’t want to make bread anymore. You had to have seen this coming – I only used you twice!”)

It’s funny, too, because whenever I’m away from the new place I find my brain downplaying it (I think it’s still refusing to process this as anything less than crisis. Stupid drama queen brain), so I’m always surprised at how awesome it is the next time I go to see it. To give you some perspective, where we’ve lived for the last 8 years is classic suburbia: three bedroom/2 bath single level. A generous living room and a great room which is, well, pretty great. The downside, though, is that as the kids have gotten older and there have come to be more loud electronics in our lifestyle, we are often on top of each other and in desperate need of a quiet corner.

The new place has 4 bedrooms (all similarly sized), 2 bonus rooms, and 2 living rooms on opposite sides of the space. And the space itself is large – most people look down our incredibly long hallway and want to know if there’s a mirror making it look longer than it is.

This is my (not to scale) rendering of the layout. Click to embiggen.

The Breakdown:

Front Yard

We’ve already sold the lawnmower.

Entryway

There are actually 3 closets altogether. I’m torn right now between making this space pretty (in which case the antique buffet goes here) or purely functional (in which case this is where we’ll keep the bikes.) Shane voted for the buffet and then later wanted to put the dry erase board in the same room. Men.

If you take a right, you’ll find on one side of the hall:

My Writing Room

and

Shane’s Office

Okay, confession. I was all set to take the larger of the two spaces, but since it also happens to be at the end of the hallway turned racetrack, the kids were drawn to it. (Well, it was the finish line.) So Shane gets the big space, while I get the ignored little room off to the side. No, but really he gets the bigger space because I love him. Plus, I’m trying to pawn off all the computer miscellanea storage on him, too, so he’ll need the extra space.

Across the way:

Kitchen

Living Room and Dining Room

This is my favorite little detail here:

As it stands right now, since we’re planning to use the other living room as our main living area, we’re not even sure what we’re going to do with the space on this side of the house. Storm has voted that we put our tent up in here.

Back down the long hallway

Hallway/Racetrack/Exercise Room

and past the entryway you’ve already seen, is the

Men’s Room

(Note: They get to do the laundry, too.) And then there’s the

Women’s Room

And then we have bedrooms:

Khy’s Room

Storm’s Room

Nicky’s Room

Oh, okay. That’s actually the hall cupboard. But he really likes it in there.

Master Bedroom

I’m in love with the closet shelving:

And at this end of the hallway is

The Other Living Room/Family Room

Just off of that is

Nicky’s Room/The Guest Room, Since Nicky Usually Sleeps on the Sofa

And finally,

Back Yard

I’m not in love with the carpet, I’ll be honest. But honestly, every other thing I can think of as a downside, I’m just perverse enough to love about it. Best of all, I think somewhere a quiet corner might be found… And once found, the door will even lock!

Garage Sale this weekend (Fri/Sat 9-4), and on Sunday we move!