One Box At a Time

We moved!

I am excited and happy and exhausted and just a little terrified.

Why?  Well, to begin with, our living area looked like a Fed Ex office.  This is actually an improvement--it originally looked like this.

Personal Image

I solved this problem by stuffing our many and generous closets with boxes I won't be dealing with anytime soon.  

It's a start.

Can I just say-I love living in new places but I hatehatehatehate moving.  This is our first time as a couple living in a second floor apartment and by a stroke of fortune/misfortune, I only ended up hauling about four boxes up the stairs.  Wes injured his knee when he brought our box spring up so we ended up calling in movers to unload the truck.  

Movers are awesome.

It took two guys less than an hour to empty our twenty foot truck.  I held the bottom door for them and as box after box after box headed up the stairs I thought to myself-what the fuck is all of this stuff?  Why do we have all of this stuff?  I don't even remember some of these boxes.

We are talking twenty or so boxes of books, ten boxes of dishes, glassware, small kitchen appliances, and cookware, five or so boxes of coats, clothing, and linen, and over ten boxes of files, tech paraphernalia, and paper.  Our stash of power tools and beauty supplies ain't nothing to sneeze at either.  The really sad part is that our storage unit isn't even empty.  There are still quite a few items large furniture items in there that will eventually be donated to the Salvation Army.  The even sadder really sad part is that we donated several boxes of goods to Goodwill before we even left the old place.

Stuff-we are drowning in it.

Wes and I agreed that at least half of this crap needs to go elsewhere.  Ideally, we will sort, donate, and toss as we unpack.  If there isn't a place for something-it will have to go.  Hopefully by the time we move again we won't have 8,000 boxes.  We missed our things desperately and grieved the pieces we had to leave behind.  Despite that, we don't want to sacrifice living space, or living ease, or freedom for things that we don't really need, things that don't really work, or things we do not absolutely love.

Unpacking

Posting will be a bit slow because . . . .

Source: tokyo-bleep.tumblr.com via Cameron on Pinterest

. . . we are settling into our brand new place!

Unpacking is a bitch and I only wished our junk looked as good as the stuff in this picture.  That looks intentional-I'd just leave it like that, lol.

Relocation Files: The Saga Continues

What is up with the Savannah rental market?  

We have been actively looking for an apartment in this city since August.  We did, in fact, find a location that was convenient to Wes' job in our price range.  We were not able to tour a model or set foot in an actual apartment.  The leasing agent did email pictures.  After a month of (expensive) weekend trips to the city for the purpose of apartment hunting, we were willing to take the risk.  We put in an application (and paid a fee) that was approved.  

That apartment never materialized.  We were eventually offered the model, an apartment that was not even available for touring until November.  A move in date was never offered.  I recently received a call from the leasing agent that another apartment-not the one we were originally promised, and not the one we toured-would be available soon.  Again, no move in date was offered.   

Due to a series of unfortunate events, Wes and I were not able to continue playing this particular waiting game.  Despite numerous red flags, we stubbornly clung to this one not-so-great prospect.  Why?  Well, there's this.

Source

That is a rental posting for a camper in someone's yard-for the very reasonable price of $600.00 a month.

Now, I'm not hating on the living in a camper scenario per se.  Just a few days ago Wes and I were giving real consideration to the possibility of living in our car.  What I am hating on is the fact that there is a very real market for capitalizing on people's fear of living on the East Side of this city.  No one is paying $600.00 a month to live in a camper.  They are paying $600.00 a month to live on the South Side, specifically because it is not the East Side.

So what's wrong with the East Side?

As far as I can tell, as a recent transplant to the area, the East Side is where you live if you don't intend or want to live long.  Basically, people act as if you will be instantaneously murdered if you live on the East Side. 

I bet you know where this is going.  

Wes and I are moving to the East Side.

We found a decent two bedroom in a quiet complex that we qualified for, with courtesy officers living on site, an efficient leasing office, and immediate availability.  We toured it  applied, were approved, forked over the security deposit, arranged our utilities, and set a move in date-all within 48 hours.

I really hope we won't be murdered.

I'm being facetious.  While we weren't quite as diligent in our background research, we did take precautions before moving forward with the application.  First, we only found this place through a referral from a former tenant.  We scoped out the neighborhood at varying times.  We also hunted up apartment ratings and reviews. 

This weekend I decided to go further and check out the real estate market in the neighborhood and stumbled upon a nice feature on Trulia.  Crime overlays!

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This is an overview of the entire city of Savannah.  The green areas are low crime areas and the red areas are . . . uh, not.  This view incorporates all crime while this view . . . 

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. . .  shows only violent crime.  Menacing, right?  Again, red=get the fuck out of dodge.

Shall we take a gander at the coveted South Side?

Source

Looks pretty good-but of course, there are still some areas of concern.

Now, the East Side neighborhood Wes and I are moving to is barely included on this image-don't worry, it's mostly green.

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Looks a lot more alarming than the South Side right.  Now take a closer look at this. . . . 

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This is a closeup of that bloody area on the left with listing prices of available real estate.  How much does it cost to live in crime infested East Side Savannah also known as the Historic District?  You could buy a place for 1.5 mil.  

Seriously-what is up with this housing market?

Relocation Files: Dreaming Medium

Today Wes and I toured what I sincerely hope will be our home before Thanksgiving.  It is a two bedroom town home with a horrible paint job, minuscule "patio", and tiny kitchen in a "mixed-income apartment community." But, the rent is affordable, it is in the right neighborhood, no one has been murdered there for at least a couple of years, and it has a dishwasher which would mean our marriage could actually survive.  

Beyond that. . . . I just really need this to happen.  As it is, we both spend a little over two hours on the road on days that we work and most of that driving is done in the unrelenting darkness of South Carolina.  It also goes without saying that living with parents who are not one's own is a very special variety of hell wherein strangers become much too familiar with one's bathroom habits.

I'm not saying this place is "the one," but I am cautiously optimistic. 

Actually what I'm saying is that there would have to be an actual, decomposing body for me to pass on another place in our price range.  And this close to Halloween, my psyche might let me get away with passing even that off as an elaborate Halloween hoax. 

So . . . .

Coping Strategies: Pinteresting

I can bitch and complain about living in my husband's childhood bedroom-and believe you me, I have plenty to write about.  Or, I can catalogue the various avoidance coping strategies I've been using in attempts to deal with my ridiculous situation.

Source: thebeautydepartment.com via Meaghan on Pinterest

I love Pinterest as much as the next girl.  I like to sink into it, sometimes for hours at a time, just to get away from my own jacked up life for a little while.  It makes sense when you think about it.  Pinterest is where we can gather all the images and ideas into collections that can best represent to the rest of the world who we would like to be-not who we are.

Source: guitarcentercoupon.net via Melesa on Pinterest

It's like how Facebook used to be before too many people who knew you in real life friended you.

I can waste hours on Pinterest.  I put that strategy to the test and went several days in a row cruising through boards making up stories about the real lives of the curators.  That's right, I took my mindless web surfing up a notch.

Source: hex.io via Leonard on Pinterest

Here are my boards.

And these are some of my favorites: From PoC-Love of Learning

Source: thomerama.tumblr.com via Aunt on Pinterest

Aunt Ruth is the Truth.  Follow everything of hers.  I almost decided to take up knitting-before I came to my senses.

And I am addicted to Nerd boards: From Gettin' My Geek On

Source: teenormous.com via Laurel on Pinterest

Then there's this . . .

Source: feministe.us via Andrea on Pinterest



So clearly my time hasn't been totally wasted.

Coping Strategies

I can bitch and complain about living in my husband's childhood bedroom-and believe you me, I have plenty to write about.  Or, I can catalogue the various avoidance coping strategies I've been using in attempts to deal with my ridiculous situation.

See more on Know Your Meme

My coping strategies of choice in the past included:

• Soaking in some sun-actually leaving the house to get some fresh air
• Taking a break from people, situations, places that are stressing me out.
• Read a book.
• Listen to music.
• Talk to a friend.
• Take a nap.
• Clean or organize something.
• Create a routine.
• Research my issue, problem, the unknown, whatever to make sure I feel informed.

These have been great so far this year.  However, these strategies were not designed to stand up to the stress of being stranded in a house with one's retired in-laws for roughly ten hours a day.  They are also based on the good old days when I had access to some wheels.  We are currently living in a part of South Carolina that is merciless to those without cars.

I need some suggestions with more juice.  Any ideas?

The Relocation Files: Slum Lord City

I really tried to follow the appropriate steps for planning and executing a relocation just to be thwarted at every turn by the minefield that is the Savannah, Georgia rental market.

If I summed the experience up into one word, that word would be WTF!

We have been looking for a place for weeks now, scouring online listings and apartment reviews.  We have advance scouted neighborhoods using Google maps and street view.  We have made many in person trips to view available properties.  We have increased our budget and expanded our preferred location.  To date, we have mostly been grossed out and horrified.

I read one review that suggested Savannah is a city of slumlords.  From what I have seen-and we have been looking all over the city-that reviewer was pretty much right on the money.

Consider these two definitions of "slum."

1. a squalid and overcrowded urban street or district inhabited by very poor people.
2. a house or building unfit for human habitation.

Definition 1 isn't the problem.  Definition 2 is.  I grew up in the Mississippi Delta, "poor neighborhood" means "working class neighborhood" to me.  The neighborhoods we have been in were populated by modest single family homes and properties that people did their best to maintain.

By and large, the houses and apartments available to rent in these neighborhoods were the worst looking and most poorly maintained places on the block.  Most of the buildings were old and with older houses and structures, there are some things that have to be dealt with: sloping floors, uneven walls, odd layouts.  However, these properties were not being maintained or managed-even though their rental and occupancy were supposedly the responsibility of property management companies.  Reputable property management companies, mind you, that were making enough money to have offices and parking downtown.  Management companies with stellar reviews on their higher market properties.

We were handed keys to places where the grass had been allowed to grow for weeks, where windows were broken and standing open, where bathrooms and kitchens had not been cleaned, where appliances were left filthy and crawling with roaches, where paint jobs were noticeably sloppy, where carpets had not been cleaned-ever, where homemade barriers had been constructed because doors did not appropriately lock . . . how is any of this property management?

I don't want to sound spoiled or unaware or . . .  bourgeois.  Trust me, I'm not.  In my lifetime I have lived in houses in worst physical shape than some of the ones we saw.  However, in those places landlords did not have the nerve to charge seven hundred dollars a month for the privilege.

If I owned any of these places and knew they were being administered this way I would be horrified.  Rentals produce income, sure, however they do that because people are required to live in them.  Real people who are paying for a safe, decent place to live.

Outrageous.

Progress Report

Yesterday was my 100th post!  Go me!

Hopefully I can finish unpacking and sorting this weekend so I can get back to getting these posts out on time.  Wes and I have been really busy around here with projects.  I'll post on these in more detail in the coming week, but for now--want a progress report?

I sorted and organized our book collection.

All images personal photos.

We built a table.

We printed invitations.

We assembled invitations.

And I experimented with making coffee filter flowers.

Who knows what next week will bring!

Chaos Prevails

We moved. 

We have not unpacked.

I can't do any creative work until we get this situation addressed.  We are having house guests this weekend so we need to get a move on with the unpacking, sorting, and organizing.

An Example of What Not to Do

We will be getting married in three months—and we still haven’t mailed out the invitations . . . for our semi-destination wedding.

Why?

Because in the interest of making this whole wedding thing as difficult as possible, we decided that we needed a bigger apartment.  I mean, is there a better time to move than the sweaty heat of early June?  (Oh there is?)

I am conflicted about how I feel about this.  On the one hand, we NEED a bigger place.

·   Our current kitchen is tiny and not really made for cooking. 

·   When Little Bit the Kid* spends the weekend he sleeps on the futon in our room—which we squeezed in through sheer determination and cheapness.  (Who needs a big kid bed when he’s been sleeping on this one since infancy, he’s already peed on it.  Folks with kids know the drill.)  He’s five now and kind of a gross roommate.  (Don’t send me hate mail.  Yes he’s cute and adorable and all that jazz, but he also snores like a freight train and farts like a grown man.  He totally reminds me of the time I rented a room in a house in Maryland for a month-had this one weirdo housemate who always smelled damp.)  He really needs his own room-a room where Lincoln Logs can run rampant and I’m not stepping on blocks every five minutes.

·   We have one closet that can’t actually be used for clothing as it’s currently being used for storage and our laundry situation is slowly taking over our bedroom.

·   We need somewhere to eat together that doesn’t involve our “nice” futon and TV trays.

These might be first world problems but they are totally stressing us out.  We stuck it out for a year in our tiny house-it’s time to upgrade.

On the other hand-I can not think of a worse time to schedule this little relocation.  (And I do mean little-we are literally moving to a building across the street.)  I am in the middle of a summer school session and I spend roughly three hours in class and four hours at work everyday.  Who has time to breathe-much less pack?  And the invitations?  Well-I just don’t want to send them and our RSVP postcards out with our old address on them.  Y’all don’t know our families—but it just isn’t worth the headache. 

Set up an online RSVP on your wedding website you say?  Well, yes-and I did.  Then I thought about who I was actually dealing with.

Ours is a small wedding made up of mostly family-quite a few considerably older than us and those of them that aren’t choose to live in areas that have not yet been blessed with any internet connection faster than dial up.

Nightmarish.  I know.  I used to live there too.

Do I really want to torture my aunt by forcing her to wait thirty minutes for a page that may never load?  Do I really want to explain to my tiny little grandmother what this here email address thingy is? 

We may as well just cough up the change for the postcard stamps.  Invitations are pretty much a formality at this point anyway—as everyone knows about the wedding and several folks have already invited themselves (um, awesome!).  I decided to just hold off and drop them in the mail with our new address on them a couple of days before we move. 

Then I plan to harass them all for responses before August.  Great plan!

Has anyone else done anything crazy like this? 

Oh-and an envelope teaser . . . I really love what we ended up doing.

* The Little Bit has requested that I stop calling him Little Bit.  Since he’s five and all now.