Nearly there!

Winding Up land life progress

We are almost there now. The auction house came to pick up a last few bits and pieces last week, gifted and sold more things, so there are just a few things left now in the garage to go to the dump and a few to charity.

Tim and Luca have been painting the lounge this Saturday. The carpet cleaner came through. While I started the final scrub down, which took almost 3 days. wiping walls, ceilings, cupboards, cleaning the kitchen top to toe, the bathrooms, cleaning windows inside and out. Deep cleaning 14 years of family living… The house looks so fresh and clean now – like a beautiful blank clean canvas. It felt like giving this old lady the love she deserves and was a beautiful way to say good bye to the house.

I couldn’t help thinking how it would have felt to give land life a face lift like this. Tim often hears this in his real estate business, people doing up their houses and then not wanting to sell them anymore because its so nice now. Why do we do things like this when we want to move out and not while we stay there?

Realistically, we wouldn’t have had the motivation or time to do this among our usual family and work schedules. We where just done for every weekend in the few spare hours that were left after work and catching up with normal household things. But I was thinking for the people out there who feel a bit stagnant and dull with what they are doing – try and get yourself a 2 month sabbatical and give your home a complete facelift and have a proper clear out, as if you would be leaving – Marie Kondo style – only put back what you really love and clear out behind beds and cupboards, wipe the walls, get the carpets cleaned, go through every shelf and cupboard etc. While it sucks doing it – it feels so good afterwards to have a fresh start – for us that will be on the boat.

We also booked our flights – Tim will fly out on the 5th of March and me and the kids on the 18th. Lucy dog will go a day or two before us.

The kids are back to school next week for another month and a bit and Tim is still working until end of February, while I will organise alot more formalities that need to doing before we leave and research more things for our sea life.

We still have to send a few boxes to the boat, so we have to do a trial packing session to check our luggage allowance and everything that doesn’t fit needs to be packed and sent separately.

So its all become quite real now – just a few weeks left in the land of the long white cloud.