ode to the laundry basket!!

we have some friends that have helped us move from james to EMO. i was so excited to be landing in the neighborhood of my dreams and super thrilled that i only had to hire furniture movers to go less than a mile. it was the best $150 i've ever spent.thanks to CK..that was her idea...she was in the process of moving into the neighborhood also.

anyway...we gathered our friends and family early one morning to begin the moving process. Mimi and Joy and Rose had been after me for weeks to get boxes and get them packed and stacked in the appropriate rooms. i did indeed get some boxes and fill them with some stuff....likewise hubby was instructed to begin packing up the garage (his own personal tool shed) and the basement. the home we were moving out of was the same home that hubby grew up in. it held many memories for him and he was struggling a bit with emotion. as i was wandering around the house i had the brilliant idea that since the house was less than a mile away..i would just do a one for one move. i would use laundry baskets to fill up with dishes and kitchen stuff..then drive them around the corner and unload them right into my new cabinets. I felt that i was brilliant in that i wouldn't be spending days unboxing things. i continued to think that i would just grab the hanging clothes and lay them flat into the back of the car and then drive them over to their new home...
i suppose that you can imagine our friends faces when they arrived to hear my 'brilliant plan'. (unless you are as clever as i) i tell you,,,they pushed me aside with the 'motherly look that you give your kids when you really like to tell them off...but know that would be a bad thing to do'....i can still see joy and mimi's faces as they just looked at me as if i had two heads. joy backed up her mini van into the driveway and just started loading anything and everything....room by room she just grabbed and loaded. i think by this time there was someone staged at the new house to direct traffic...i can remember mimi upstairs in the kids room with a broom and dustpan...saying to me....sheri..you can NOT leave this house without cleaning it!!!! you must sweep and do your best to make it presentable....and i had thought i was great for really scrubbing out the fridge and oven...ha!! so as a good child i did what i was told and windexed and swept as the rooms were emptied...
mean while...in the garage..hubby's friends were having similar trouble .... when they went to the garage to load up what they thought would be boxes..they found hubby...standing in the middle of the garage with this mystified look on his face. i kid you not....they said he was just staring at all of his tools...all still in mangled messes and hanging from peg boards...and secretly reminiscing about all the good times he had had fixing (and breaking) stuff in that garage over 18 years!!

as you can imagine, when hubby took this position and we talked about moving..our friends took every opportunity to ask if we would be packing in laundry baskets again!! i took great pride in TELLING them that the movers would be packing for me!! all i had to do was supervise and put all liquids in my car...

here we find ourselves almost exactly a year to the day in moving mode again. the movers will be here on the 17th...they will be loading but not packing. i again prove myself to be brilliant...i SAVED all the boxes that we unpacked when we arrived here!! YEP...hubby and i folded and stacked them in the attics....
today i brought down a big stack of boxes to begin packing things i don't use everyday like bake wear and winter clothes. I made sure that i read the markings on the boxes and am packing what is labeled...so the china cabinet box gets china cabinet stuff...wardrobe boxes labeled master bedroom are getting us big peoples' clothes...

aren't ya proud!!????
you know...there ARE times when we learn from our mistakes!!!