One week in...

So... what an interesting ride this has been getting to this point in our downsizing adventure. Some of it, we expected. We expected it to be difficult at times as we were letting go of things we'd held onto for so long... photos, keepsakes, family heirlooms and encyclopedias.

Yep, sweet hubby had a full set of Encyclopedia Brittanica his mom had bought for him and his sister back when they were kids (he's 50 now so that's been awhile!). They meant a lot to him because he knew it was a sacrifice his mom made for them to spend money she really didn't have in the hopes their educational future would be brighter. Considering his sister has a PhD and he has 5 degrees himself, I think it worked! :)

But we managed to let go of many of the things we'd held onto. We realized not having the things won't mean not having the memories that went with them. And now that it's all behind us, we both feel very unencumbered... lighter... freer. It's nice.

We didn't expect to sell ALL our furniture from our Edmond home in one weekend and we didn't expect to live in an empty house (except for a bed and the Christmas tree!) until we could move into the condo. But we managed.

And now we've been in the condo for one week. Last night actually marked the beginning of our second week here. And we're almost settled in to the point we can stop working and just live here. That feels really good.

Sweet hubby is so handy. I'm really not sure there is any kind of handyman task that he doesn't know how to do. I know he loves doing that kind of thing because it's so different from the job he gets paid to do. He really is brilliant and he can figure out how to do anything. It's fun to watch him work things out.

He has done quite a bit around the condo that just had to be done. Some of it, no one else would ever notice but HE would. Things like changing the screws on light switch plates because the paint had worn off them. Things like putting plates on the boxes where the speaker wires come out of the wall (and were hidden behind a cabinet). Things like adding a washer to the door latch plate
so the closet door stays closed. He changed the dryer door so that it opens on the same side as the washer. He's been a busy guy. :)

We spent a lot of time yesterday hanging things on the walls. Wow, what a difference that makes. I think we're seriously almost done with things inside the condo. Sweet hubby needs to go through things to get his garage in order and we need to sort through our closet and get that more organized. We thought we had weaned down our clothes enough but we need to trim a bit more.

So here's a look at how things have changed. Our living room in our Edmond home...



and our condo...


Our master bedroom in the house...



And in the condo...


And perhaps one of the biggest changes... here's what we used to see looking out into our backyard at the Edmond house...



and here is what we see now...



We're really happy with how things are looking inside the condo (and we know the view will just get prettier once spring arrives!) Maybe now, we can get out and start exploring our new downtown surroundings, which we haven't had a chance to do just yet. We have, however, already signed up for a bowling league that starts then end of January at Red Pin. Yep, we're ready to be downtowners. I even got new bowling shoes. :)


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Block 42

In The Blink of an Eye

Way too typical for winter (or near winter in this case!) in Oklahoma, we had an ice/snow storm last week that was pretty bad.  A combination of ice and freezing rain started Wednesday night into Thursday and then the snow came.  I didn't measure at home but I think we got at least 6 inches of the fluffy white stuff.  It was really pretty, as long as I didn't have to go out in it, and I didn't have to go anywhere Friday because I was off work.  We kept hearing on the news (which I'm pretty sure ran all day long, as it tends to do in weather situations here in our great state) that roads were treacherous and everyone should plan on staying home for the next few days.  Sounded good to me!






After talking Friday night and Saturday morning about our move and how quickly we were going to need to be completely out of the house pretty much as soon as Christmas was over, sweet hubby got the idea that we should put ALL of our furniture (we were seriously selling pretty much everything in the entire house!) on Craigslist first thing Saturday morning (and when I say first thing I mean like 6:30 a.m. - yes, we are those dreaded morning people!).



I tried to tell him that I didn't think the timing was good... the roads were bad... no one in their right mind would get out on streets like that to go buy furniture, right?  Uh, no.  Apparently not.  I think we must have had close to a dozen individual posts on Craigslist and almost immediately, the calls and texts started coming in.  I was shocked. But honestly, we had some really great stuff we were selling...


















It wasn't too much longer before the people who called and texted started showing up... and buying stuff... and leaving with it.  Piece by piece all day Saturday and Sunday, our furniture departed until we were left with nothing but the barstools and Queen size bed (which the home buyers want), the rug on the living room floor and the Christmas tree.  Well, technically we had a few more pieces but it was only because the people buying them hadn't picked them up yet.  The house was pretty empty!  Wow... I did NOT expect that to happen so quickly.  Someone at work told me it was probably smart to sell before Christmas while people still had money.  Maybe they have a point.  :)





So now, in what seems like the blink of an eye, we're living in an empty house and won't move into the condo downtown until this coming weekend.  It's going to be interesting, that's for sure.  For one thing, we're sleeping in the guest room (formerly the heathen son's room) where the Queen size bed is because our King size bed in the master bedroom sold.  That's different.

There's not only nothing left on the walls anywhere in the house but sweet hubby has already managed to fill/repair all the nail holes and touched up the paint! The walls look like there's never been anything on them!

We sat on the living room rug the other night to watch TV and I realized I had the perfect spot to wrap Christmas presents, so that's what I did.  Now we have presents under the tree in the empty living room!  :) It's pretty funny, really.

And speaking of Christmas, what were we going to do about Christmas now?  We really didn't want to take the tree down (seriously, I never ever put up the tree until December 15th but this year I put it up early and we have to move!  What the what?) only to put it up again at the condo.. what a pain.  But have no fear, sweet hubby came up with a brilliant plan... we'll have a camp out Christmas at the house!

We're going to get air mattresses for the kids (heathen daughter, sweet son-in-law, precious grandbaby and heathen son) to sleep on (hubby and I still get the Queen bed, of course!).  We'll have pillows to rest on and we'll order in pizza.  Then we'll rent some movies and have popcorn and hot chocolate... maybe even a fire in the fireplace (for the last time). It should definitely be a memorable Christmas. :) When I told heathen daughter the plan she said "Why did we never do this when I lived at home?" LOL. Uh, maybe because we always had furniture?

Once the presents are opened Christmas morning and everything is cleaned up, we'll head downtown to the condo for Christmas dinner. I think it's going to be a great Christmas. Hope yours is, too! :)

The Craze Begins!

Whew, the last couple of weeks have flown by! Hubby and I have both been crazy busy at work so we haven't done much to get ready for the move. Of course the new condo is furnished so that simplifies things a bit... or does it?

Well, sure, it simplifies things as far as the actual move goes. We don't really have to move all that much stuff. Clothes, personal belongings and kitchen stuff is about it really. We do, however, have a house full of furniture that we knew we'd have to deal with eventually. The plan was to leave the house "staged" with all the furniture until it sells. Great idea, huh? We thought so.

Our lease on the new condo starts on December 14... less than ten days from now. We had decided to stay in the house through Christmas though because heathen son, heathen daughter (it's an affectionate term), wonderful son-in-law and most beautiful grandbaby are all coming to spend the night Christmas Eve. We even bought a new "skinny" Christmas tree that will fit a lot better in the new condo. We're all set.









Sticking around the house for awhile after our lease started would be fine. Heathen son will be home from college on break and we're busy at work anyway. Not a big deal... or so we thought.

We've had a lot of showings on the house and everyone seemed to love it (seriously.. what's not to love?) but the offers weren't just pouring in. We did get an offer last week while we were away at the beach for Thanksgiving but it was a contingency offer. We decided not to accept that. We didn't want to risk it not going through knowing other realtors would be hesitant to show the house with a contingency contract in place.

The couple who made that offer came back to see the house for a second time yesterday but another couple came for the first time - and they made an offer right away with a very quick closing date (only a month away!). Woo-hoo! While I feel a little bad for the couple who made the contingency offer for missing out on the house, I couldn't be happier that we got an offer we could accept and we won't be faced with having double house payments. What a relief!

Now for the fun part. (Yeah, that's it... the FUN part!) Since our closing date is just days after Christmas, we'll have to get moving fast as soon as Christmas is over. Looks like heathen son will get to live in the condo downtown with us until school starts again in mid-January. He's going to love that, I'm sure. And, in the meantime, you can visit Craigslist.org to see all the really great furniture we've posted for sale! Whew... fun, fun, fun. :)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Letting Go and Looking Forward!

I've been a little surprised by the reaction some people have had to our downsizing efforts so far... especially my throwing away so many of our family photos. I had one person post on my Facebook page that as she was reading my blog about getting rid of Christmas stuff and going through our photo albums, she could feel a strange palpitation in her chest and was near having a panic attack and it wasn't even her stuff! LOL. Wow. I bet she has a lot of stuff.

Oddly enough, it really hasn't been that hard for me. The photographs were probably the toughest and maybe that's why I tackled that project early on - to get it over with and put it behind me. You know what they say about the best way to eat an elephant... one bite at a time. :) Now that it's done, I feel amazingly lighter. I can still go through my one photo album and have all the memories attached to those pictures... and, should the need ever arise, I can easily grab that one album and be able to save those memories and take them with me.

Knowing we're not going to have a lot of space has really made me prioritize what's important and what's not and I've pretty much decided that stuff is just not that important. Sure, some things are more valuable that others... jewelry for instance. But I don't have a lot of expensive jewelry other than my wedding rings (which, of course, I'm not giving up.) And then there are things we've always valued because of tender memories associated with them but not hanging on to the things isn't going to erase the memories. And isn't hanging on to the stuff with memories attached kind of a way to live in the past? Is that really where we want to live? I don't think so. I want to let go of the past and look ahead to the future.

So with that in mind, I'm heading home from a business trip this afternoon and I'm ready to make another sweep through the house. I don't think I'll find too much that needs getting rid of still... I'm pretty sure we accomplished most of that last weekend. But I do think it's time to start packing up those things we'll be keeping that we may not need to use in the next few weeks... summer clothes and shoes (I heard it got into the 20s at home last night... Brrrrrr!), stuff like that. I think by the time we are actually ready to move, it should be a pretty easy process.

We've got another Urban Neighbors get-together tomorrow evening (a monthly social this time) and I know we're both looking forward to it. Looking forward. That's what I want to do... not live in the past. Look forward. Look forward to new friends (although I AM keeping all my old friends - some things you don't want to get rid of!), new experiences and new adventures with my sweet hubby, not burdened or weighed down by things that just don't matter.

I feel a palpitation in my chest, too, but it's not panic, it's excitement. :)


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Garage Sale Complete!

I've never been a big fan of garage sales -- going to them, or worse, having them. However, they can be a good way of getting rid of stuff you no longer need or want and we definitely had a lot of things that fit into that category. A garage sale seemed like the best solution.

But wait a second... it's almost the middle of November! Who has garage sales in November? Well, people who are moving in mid-December, that's who! And since Oklahoma weather is unpredictable at any season, having a garage sale at almost any time of year is a crap shoot as far as that's concerned. Well, the weather gods were smiling on us this weekend, that's for sure. I doubt there's ever been better garage sale weather in November. We held the sale both Friday and Saturday and both days the temps got well into the 60s. Yes, it was a little chilly in the mornings and Friday was a little on the windy side (What? Windy in Oklahoma? Seriously? :) ) but overall it was terrific.

I posted ads on Craigslist starting mid-week - and included pictures of some of the better items we had in the sale. I started getting texts and emails from people right away, which surprised me. I'd never posted a garage sale on Craigslist but people obviously use it to scout them out. If you post a sale there I strongly encourage you to post pictures, too. When I looked through the other ads, mine was the only one I saw with pictures. They don't have to be great... just take them with your phone. That's what I did.
















We had people waiting for us to open the garage door at 6:50 Friday morning and had a steady stream all day. That surprised me. Don't these people work? :) Oh, wait... I was off work Friday, too. Nevermind. So we sold a lot of stuff on Friday but it seemed we still had a ton left to sell on Saturday. I wasn't sure we could do it.

Saturday started off a little slower... nobody waiting when we opened the garage door and I think it was about 30 minutes before anyone showed up. Once it got started though, there was a steady stream of people and they were all in the mood to buy. Things I thought would never sell seemed to sell quickly! It was bizarre.

Of course there were the people who would offer us $5 for something that was marked $30 (like the $125 coffee pot that was brand new, never used.) I suppose it was worth a shot for them... we could have said yes. But we didn't. We had things priced fairly and, while we did make a few people some really great deals, we stuck to our guns for the most part. Sweet hubby had taken the day off Friday to help and wow, is he ever a salesman! He talked people into all kinds of stuff they didn't plan on. :) It was great.

Heathen daughter brought a ton of baby clothes, a bunch of shoes (her shoe size went up when she was pregnant and hasn't gone back down!) and some other stuff to clear out their apartment. She got rid of almost everything and was very pleased to have made some money for Christmas shopping.

When we finally closed up at 2 p.m. Saturday, we loaded what was left into two small bins and took it straight to Goodwill. By 3:00, the garage was completely cleared out and not a single item came back into the house. When we added up our proceeds from the sale, it was over $800! Wow. How on earth could we, a couple of "minimalists", had that much stuff to sell? I'm not sure... but it turns out we did. Guess we earned ourselves some Christmas shopping money, too. :) Or better yet, maybe some shopping money for some new stuff for our downtown condo. Yeah, that's it. That's the ticket. :)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Edmond, OK

Our First Downtown Adventure!

When we knew for sure we'll be moving downtown I started scouring the web for all the information I could find about living in downtown OKC. I was pleased to find there was quite a bit more info than I originally expected. I was especially pleased to find out about a group called Urban Neighbors, a neighborhood association group of people who live downtown (http://urbanneighbors.org).

Their website says they're for neighbors, by neighbors. It also says they're dedicated to fostering quality residential living in downtown Oklahoma City and they do that through positive interactive meetings, social events, and issue-oriented dialogue and activities. Hmmm, sounds like something we would be interested in. I signed up for their newsletter and their email alerts.

Just a couple days later I got one of those email alerts letting me know about the final 2013 wine dinner planned at Stella's in midtown. I ran the idea by sweet hubby and he thought it sounded great (uh, hello... it was a WINE dinner, duh!), so I emailed them to let them know we weren't technically urban neighbors just yet but would like to come if they had room. Got an almost-instant response telling us to come! Hooray! (they're obviously smart people, huh? :))







Last night was the night so we were off to Stella's for our first Urban Neighbors event. No idea what to expect really but we were excited. And wow, were we ever right to be excited! What a fun group they were! Looks like there are some great people living downtown. We met people who live all over downtown -- as I've said in this blog before, there are plenty of choices for living downtown. Not something I would have imagined 10 years ago, that's for sure. We met people from Park Harvey, Sycamore Square, Avana Arts and we even met our upstairs neighbor (she lives in the condo directly above the one we'll live in) from Block 42. How cool is that?

Everyone was very friendly and welcoming. They encouraged us to participate in all their events -- quarterly dinners and monthly socials. Their November social is next week at Artspace at Untitled (http://artspaceatuntitled.org). I'd never heard of this place but when I looked it up it looks pretty cool! I think we'll definitely try to make it. Artspace at Untitled is within a short walking distance of our new condo, so that will be really awesome once we're actually downtown.

A big thanks to Monty, Shelly & John and Francie for helping us feel so welcome and for making us really look forward to future Urban Neighbors events. Can't wait to get to know all of them better.

We're really looking forward to being downtown for the holidays. We should be moved in by mid-December. So much going on downtown then... and it should be so pretty, too.







The garage sale is all set for this weekend and we'll hopefully be that much closer to our downsizing goals by then. Come by if you get the chance - lots of great stuff! I may even share a mimosa (a garage sale tradition) with you. :)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Amazing progress!

Wow… did we accomplish a lot this weekend!  More than I ever expected we would.  That’s what’s so funny about a huge project like this downsizing… it seems so overwhelming at first but once you get started on it, it moves pretty fast – and then, the more you get done the more you want to keep doing and before you know it, you’ve made great strides.  I love it!  This is going to end up being the easiest move ever and I know we’re going to feel so good to have lightened our load by so much.

First, we’ve decided to have a garage sale this weekend to purge as much as we can.  Heathen daughter was thrilled to hear it because, now that our sweet angel grandbaby is almost 5 months old, they have a TON of baby stuff she’s already outgrown (clothes and accoutrements).  That’s great because baby stuff is always a good garage sale draw.

We made a big sweep of the house through every closet, every drawer, every nook and cranny to find everything we had tucked aside with the idea that we might possibly use it sometime.  Some of it, of course, had been untouched for years.  Now that the idea is not to hang on to anything we don’t actually need, nearly everything can go.  The re-gifting closet (don’t act like you don’t re-gift!) is now empty.  :)  The kitchen cabinets are now cleared of all the gadgets and gizmos and small appliances that never see the light of day.  Tons of gift wrap and at least a bazillion assorted gift bags (I didn’t actually count them, it’s just a guess, but I think I'm pretty close!), out to be sold!  It is amazing how much lighter I feel and we haven’t even had the garage sale yet. :)

Sweet hubby had a huge project – the garage.  Now, if any of you have ever seen our garage, you know how incredibly organized he is.  However, he had a ton of bins (16 of them!) to go through – bins with everything from tools to electrical supplies to nuts and bolts.  It took him all weekend long but he did it!  He sold some of the bigger things (mostly aircraft tools and such) to a co-worker (who already came by to get them!) and added more to the garage sale.  Now he’s left with only one bin of house stuff that we’ll actually leave with the house.  So proud of him.  :)

And then there were the photo albums.  Sigh.  I’d already gone through them once and pulled out all the pictures I knew we wouldn’t keep but there were still 24 mostly full albums of pictures from the last 35+ years of my life (I didn’t have many pics from before I was a teenager – being 6^th of 7 children, mom was not much into pictures at that point – can’t say that I blame her.). Here is what we had though...

But I had a goal – to end up with only one album of my very favorite pictures.  And you know what?  I did it.  In fact, the album isn’t even completely full!  I’m so impressed with myself.  (pat, pat, pat on the back)

I also made an album for each of the heathen children and, before I actually tossed the photos out, I let them go through the stack of pictures I didn’t think any of us had to keep.  They each picked out about 5 pictures from that gianormous stack and the rest of them went into the trash.  Wow.  Talk about a liberating feeling!  I realized if there had ever been something like a tornado or fire, there would have been no way I could have grabbed 24 photo albums and saved them… and my favorite pictures were scattered throughout all 24 of them.  If something happened now, I could easily grab my one photo album and flee with it… and ALL… every single one… of my very favorite pictures would be safe.  I like that feeling.  Here's a shot of our cabinet of photo albums now... (the two albums on the top right are mine and heathen son's... the others belong to sweet hubby and he has to go through those!  The yearbooks on the next shelf are next!)

We'll have a busy week ahead getting ready for the sale and then hopefully clear everything out in the garage sale (donating what doesn’t sell) and then I’m off to D.C. next Sunday for the annual Youth Tour Directors Conference.  Oh, and this Wednesday evening we’re joining some people from Urban Neighbors, a downtown neighborhood association for a wine dinner at Stella’s in midtown.  It will be nice to get to meet some other people who have chosen downtown living.  Maybe we’ll meet some of our new neighbors before we even move in!

It sure feels good to start a week with such a sense of accomplishment.

6 week countdown!

Wow, we’re already on the 6 week count down to our condo move in!  How exciting.  :)  We’ve had a really busy week but we’ve made some headway on a few things.  

Last weekend, our first big project was the file cabinet.  We managed to go through our extremely stuffed four-drawer file cabinet and find a large pile of papers to throw away, an even bigger pile of papers to shred and we managed to dwindle everything down to one drawer of files that isn’t even quite full. 

It’s amazing how much paperwork we keep when it’s not really necessary.  I think it’s just that if you have space for it, you’ll find a way to fill up that space.  Now that we know we’re not going to have a ton of space to fill up, I bet we’ll be a lot more cognizant of what we keep.  For instance, we googled it to find out how many years you need to keep tax records and it turns out you only need to keep your last 3 years.  So the plan now is that every year we file our newest tax returns, we’ll get rid of the oldest, which will then be 4 years old.  So it turns out that we no longer needed those tax records we had from 1984!  Seriously… I’m not joking.  We had all our tax returns since 1984.  WHO does that?  Sigh…

We had just finished going through everything when the realtor called to tell us someone wanted to show the house in 30 minutes! Yikes!  We told her we’d be ready in an hour and went into overdrive cleaning everything up.  We finished with about 5 minutes to spare and the showing went great… no word on it yet but we’re keeping our fingers crossed.  :)

The next project we started was the Christmas decorations.  You’d think this would be really overwhelming but we had actually gotten rid of a lot of Christmas stuff the year before.  We currently had 2 large bins and 2 smaller bins, all completely full, of course.  We separated out the things we had to keep… tree skirt, stocking and precious ornaments.  I picked out a couple of my favorite Santa Clauses (that I started collecting each year almost 30 years ago!) and decided to let the rest go.  We put together a bin for each of the heathen children (it’s an affectionate term, for those of you who don’t know) and we completely eliminated one of the large bins of stuff.  We are keeping only one large bin so we downsized by about 75%!  Not too shabby!  Oh, and the beautiful Christmas tree went to a good home, too.  Really happy about that – I always loved that tree.

Next up was the collection I really wasn’t looking forward to because it was just so overwhelming.  The photo albums.  ALL THOSE PICTURES!  Whew… thousands.  Literally thousands of pictures to go through.  It was actually nice on one hand… a definitely walk down memory lane.  I don’t know that I’d ever actually gone through my entire collection of photo albums at one time before (thank goodness for good wine!)… but I did it Sunday afternoon (and evening… and night!).  I finally made it through them all but this was just the first go ‘round.  I counted them and there are 24 albums in all.

As I went through the albums I removed all the pictures that were just places (no people).  There were some great shots but there’s no need to keep those.  Trashed.  I also, oddly enough, removed pictures of people who I just wasn’t really sure who they were.  LOL.  Oh, they were usually in my house… I recognized that part… but I wasn’t sure who some of them were.  I may have known them 20 years ago but I didn’t need a picture of them now.  Trashed.

I started pulling out photos I could give to other people… my older sister, who I’ve always considered to be the keeper of photos in our family, is getting the biggest stash of them.  My younger brother is getting a large batch as well.  So is our wonderful family in New Orleans (they’re actually my firsthusband’s family but they kept me in the divorce!).  Then I had some great pictures to send to far away friends from over the years… I would like to see the looks on their faces when they get that package in the mail (mailed them earlier this week!).  I hope they enjoy them.

So this weekend, I’ll go through the photo albums (that have been cleared out quite a bit already!) with a new goal.  My goal is to pick out only my very favorite pictures from each album and put those into a new album that I will keep.  ONE album.  One.  Uno.  Wow… can I do it?  I think so… (cue the Little Engine…)  We’ll see.  :)

I’ll also put together an album for my daughter and one for my son and give those to them to keep.  I asked them if they’d want to go through the remaining photos to make sure there wasn’t anything they wanted to keep but they both said no, one album would be enough for them.  I wonder how many pics will be left when I’m done?  I may have to take those to my sister just to make sure she doesn’t any before they get tossed away.  Would that be enabling her?  :)  Surely not…

We’ll get started this weekend on gathering things up for the garage sale.  We’ve set the date for November 9th… the weather is forecast to still be pretty warm and my daughter has said she’s already got some baby stuff to add to the sale.  I’m sure we’ll end up with a garage full of stuff!  Whew…

So… here’s to a busy 6 weeks and a continuation of a very cathartic process.  :)

The Adventure begins!

We first came up with the idea of finding a condo or apartment in downtown OKC earlier this year. Just an idea, really. Nothing we actually pursued, just discussed.  We did drive around to see what might be available but that was it really.

Then somehow we ran across a condo in Block 42 that we looked at but the owner had been leasing it and really wanted to sell it.  We just didn’t want to buy – the whole idea behind moving downtown was to get out from under a mortgage so that when we decided to retire and run away to the beach (in less than 5 years!), we’d be free to do it without worrying about trying to sell a home.  It was fun looking at the condo but we knew we weren’t interested in buying so we just let it go.  We did, however, fall in love with Block 42.

Fast forward a few months and here we were again thinking about downsizing and moving downtown.  (it seems that once we get an idea in our head it tends to take root!) Now our youngest was in college and we became official empty nesters.  It seemed like an ideal time.  So we started looking.  Couldn’t find anything in Block 42, try as we might, so we searched other places.  LOTS of other places.  Apartments, condos, converted hotels, lofts, you name it, we looked at it.  The good news is there are now LOTS of places to live downtown so there are many options.

We found an apartment we liked over near the Civic Center in Legacy Arts (now Avana Arts) but we didn’t have our house on the market and we didn’t want to have two payments so we let it slide, deciding that once we got our house on the market, we’d look again, starting at that complex.  To go along with the good news I mentioned in the last paragraph, the bad news is that if you find something you like downtown you have to jump on it fast or you risk losing out to someone who is ready to act.  This is what we found at Avana – when we went back to look now that we were ready to act (we were ready, weren’t we?), they had nothing available that fit our needs.  Hmpf. Back to square 1.  Well, not really square 1 because we had a long list of places we already knew we weren’t interested in – but Avana and Block 42 were really the only two we liked enough to consider.  As luck would have it, sweet hubby discovered there was a lease about to expire in Block 42!  Could it be? Yes, yes it could!

We made arrangements and met up with a lovely young woman named Jenna who showed us the condo.  It was nice of the current tenants to allow us to see it while they were still living there and it was obvious they’ve really taken care of the place.  And the condo was exactly what we were looking for – 2 bedrooms, 2 bath, good size dining room, nice kitchen and big windows.  Almost perfect (I say almost because hubby really doesn’t care for the concrete floors… but it wasn’t a deal breaker.)

Here's where it's located.  You can see block 42 right at the top of the map, just north of Deep Deuce and Bricktown:

The view is not a downtown view because the condo looks to the north.  However, there’s lots of green space and it’s literally only a couple of blocks from Bricktown.  From there we can walk to almost anything downtown we’d like to see or do.  And the unexpected kicker?  It’s fully furnished. Really nice furniture. We did NOT expect that.

Now we have a house full of furniture that we love (we love it so much that our condo in Gulf Shores, Alabama is furnished the same way!)… and we haven’t figured out yet what we’ll do with it all… Give it away?  Sell it? Store it?  Hmmm, decisions, decisions.  But our lease doesn’t start until mid-December so we have time to decide.

What we do not have a lot of time for is going through all of our stuff, sorting what to keep and what to get rid of and how to get rid of it… now THAT is going to be a project.

We like to think we’re minimalists (and I'm certain compared to most people we really are) and we’re both very organized but I know we still have a lot of stuff to go through. Files, Christmas decorations, and photo albums.  Oh, my... the photo albums.  Back in the days when cameras actually took film I'm convinced I should have owned stock in Kodak.  I must have over 15 photo albums completely filled with photos.  Now THAT will be a job.  Ah, well, there IS a big difference in a 2500 sf house and a 1200 sf condo!

So, with a little more than 7 weeks until move in, the adventure begins! J