On Moving Out, Letting Go and Moving Forward

If you haven’t been following me on Instagram or if we’re not friends on Facebook, you wouldn’t know that my family and I have recently moved. Everything has been so hectic lately that I haven’t even been able to blog about moving until now.

It all began a month ago when my father-in-law announced over family lunch that they’re asking us to move down to the second floor from the third floor of the building. He owns the property, you see. Long story short, he needs to convert the entire third floor to a dorm-like place for bed spacers.

I normally wouldn’t mind but I was really distraught about the move for a lot of reasons. One main reason is the fact that we have A LOT of stuff and I didn’t know how we could possibly fit everything into the smaller apartment on the second floor. Secondly, I was already hectic with work and household stuff that I didn’t know how I could even fit in packing our stuff into my schedule and finish everything in three weeks. Lastly, I only wanted to move if it meant moving to our own place. But sadly, that option is not available yet for us at the moment.

I’ll spare you the details but this I tell you – it was HARD and it came with a lot of sacrifice (a.k.a. having to miss days of work). To say that it was EXHAUSTING is an understatement. The really good thing though is that everyone in our family helped – that means hubby, the girls and even little boy, Ziggy. But there were also times that he amused himself just watching cartoons while lying down on the sofa bed while the rest of us toiled away. I was envious! Haha!

Anyway, we were finally able to move down here last Thursday. We decided to take advantage of the holiday and the long weekend so that the girls will be around to help. We initially planned on just bringing stuff down that day and then start sleeping here by Saturday. But because construction was already ongoing at our old place, we decided to move in already on Thursday even if we haven’t moved all of our stuff yet.

Right now, we’re still getting used to our new place. There are still some stuff that needs to be organized. While the kids’ rooms, kitchen and dining area are done already, we’re still in the process of organizing some things in the master’s bedroom, bathroom and the living room. But at least, we can already go about our daily life without bumping into stuff. Until a couple of days ago, these boxes and baby stuff were all still crowding the living room. Most of them are gone now, thank God!

Here’s a photo of the girls, which I took when they were in the process of organizing their room. They have a bigger room now and a longer table that they can both use. They’re a lot happier now with their new room.

I haven’t been able to take a photo of Ziggy’s room yet. It’s only about half the size of his old room so it’s really small. I think it was his old room that was the hardest for me to let go. He had a really cute room because I won a nursery makeover two years ago from Smart Parenting magazine. We had lots of bonding moments there and I am so bummed that we weren’t even able to say a proper goodbye to the room before the construction guys started tearing it down.

I’ve always had a problem of letting go because I tend to care so much about stuff and about people. We’ve been living upstairs for almost 4 1/2 years already. It was where we became a family of five. I will miss looking out from the balcony and seeing the sky. I will miss my laundry area. I will miss the bigger, more comfortable bathroom. Now there will be lots of other people there. The place already looks different. Everything happened so fast and part of me is having trouble keeping up.

But slowly, I’m learning to embrace the changes. For instance, there were a lot of stuff that we had to leave at the third floor because we wouldn’t be able to fit them here anymore. There were also stuff I intended to sell in a garage sale that I decided to just donate already just to clear space.

More than that, I’m trying my best to embrace the change and move forward by first accepting the change. This is our new reality now. We are still very blessed to be here. Besides, there are good things about this new place too. For instance, I have a bigger and nice workstation that I can’t wait to decorate. I think it’s the best corner in the house, and it’s all mine!

I still can’t help but get teary-eyed thinking about the home that we left and the dream home that we have yet to have. But in the end, I know, home is where the heart is. My heart is with four people and since they’re all here, then that’s enough to make this place HOME.