The thrills and trials of a new house

We’ve moved! From a big huge roll of bubble wrap, seventy brown boxes, a ridiculously heavy stack of newsprint and about 7 rolls of brown tape thrown in for fun…we used them all up…we are now working our way through dismantling and destroying all our hard work. But it feels so good!

We’re down to about 20 boxes now but they are all mostly just curios and figurines along with books (lots of those) and some odds and ends. The kitchen was the first room we unpacked…and with that out of the way, the rest slowly fell into place.

One of the first things we realized was that we just do not have enough space for our stuff (ESP the clothes) in spite of throwing away tons and donating a couple of boxes it’s still never going to fix comfortably in the wardrobe space we have here. So we may have to go furniture shopping again for some dressers or something. I’m not complaining…I love furniture shopping.

Today we got our two Japanese console tables delivered….they look fantastic! and as soon as they were placed, we looked at each other and though- this is beginning to feel a lot like home now 🙂

It’s been 5 days now and I can safely say that a few of my concerns have been dispelled
– there are no mosquitoes swarming around (as some people say is common in landed houses)
– the rooms are not dark and gloomy ( yes, the inner rooms do get darker than the outer ones but not enough that you need lights on all day)
– no cockroaches! Ya yay! And I intended to keep it that way.
– no noisy neighbors. In fact it’s so peaceful and quiet that I feel like I’m in a resort or in Goa. And one of our neighbors is really sweet- he dropped off a jar of chocolate cookies as a welcome to the neighborhood gift! I thought that was really nice.

So we’re both really looking forward to living here, it’s completely different from what we have been used to but we’re extremely excited to experience what lies ahead 🙂

And I thought I’d end with a pic from littlefriendsphotolittlefriens. Just love Seth Casteel and all his work! And this one is a bit like how I feel right now, excited, tired and very very hot! What’s with the weather? Nothing like sticking your head in the pool right?

…and the countdown has begun!

Yup, it’s about three weeks to moving day. And I randomly decided yesterday (not such a good idea) to log on and see if there is something like a moving check list I could use. Well, I was in for a surprise. There are literally tons! Excel spreadsheets, complicated looking tables, checklists, ‘to-do’ lists, color coded labels, packing instructions….the list goes on. I was overwhelmed!

A million thoughts ran into my head all at once…why didn’t I think of this before? why had I waited this long to ‘make a list’ and why on earth did i not know about this earlier? (considering I’ve moved thrice in five years)  Most of those organising lists stated that you need to start two months in advance…TWO MONTHS??!!! I have only like 3 weeks. Will that ever be enough?

Packing labels – image courtesy http://www.theprojectgirl.com

Then the husband came home. And I relaxed. I have super boy to help me with everything. And it will all be fine 🙂 Nah, but realistically speaking, we still have time. We’ve booked our movers, we’ve contacted our fibre broadband guy for the transfer and the husband has already packed away all our books, figurines and curios along with some of the electronic stuff …we’re getting there!

One fantastic bit of information I’ve discovered is that apparently when you move house in Singapore, all you need to do is visit the closest police station and update them of the move. That way about 30? participating govt. agencies and statutory boards will be intimated of this change in address automatically. So we don’t need to contact them individually. Isn’t that brilliant? read more about this here 

So we got three quotations from three different movers. We originally wanted to use The Helping Hand but they weren’t available on the day are scheduled to move so we got quotes from Shalom, The Charis Mission and 138 Movers.

138 movers quoted a ridiculously high price and quite honestly I did not get a very good vibe from them But thats just my opinion. We were tied between The Charis Mission and Shalom. We liked both and the quotes were figures we could work with. What it finally came down to was the boxes. Charis charges for boxes (they give you 10 per truck free) and Shalom includes those charges into the total fee. Since we didn’t want to pay for boxes that would be thrown away or returned anyway, we decided to go with Shalom. But we almost went with Charis too – the guy who came over was polite, soft spoken and very very likable.

Today is the day they come over to drop off the boxes and I will have to officially start packing. It’s amazing just how much of stuff accumulates between just two people over 4 years (in this house) *sigh*

I think that Osim chair is going to come in very handy once the move is done…looking forward to spending some quality time with the husband sitting out on our porch and just relaxing. Less than three weeks!!!