Where in the world are the Castruccis?

Wondering where I've been? Still in Austin, getting the house ready.

For instance, this is (was) my den:




















Looks a little empty... huh? But as you can see, we've decided to keep the cats.

The den is one of the more soothing rooms as of today. Get a look at my kitchen:




















What you can't read is that each post-it note either says "loft" or "storage." Just to complicate our move more, we are spending our first 6 months in Atlanta in a 1000 square foot loft (as compared to a 3200 square foot house). So, I have to go through all of our stuff and indicate what is coming to the loft and what goes to storage so the movers/packers/designated lackeys who will help me coordinate the movers and packers will know what is going on.

Every time I walk in to this room I get over-stimulated. Here is another view of the room where I spend most of my day:




















It's never ending. And, to make this worse, I had to move stuff around so every morning I'm looking for a spoon and I end up with barbecue tongs. But I'm not trying to get used to this new layout since in a week everything will be in a new location in a new kitchen anyway.

Here is the number one thing I've learned about moving - we all have too much crap. Now, keep in mind that I supposedly learned this lesson 4 years ago when we moved from New Jersey to Austin. This time things are a little different because now I'm deciding whether or not something is important enough to pay for in storage... and most things aren't - it's amazing.

And I know, you are reading this thinking that you are a thrower-outer... but you aren't. You might be good at throwing out someone else's crap, but when it comes to your grandmother's table cloth or the first gift your husband gave you, you've kept it. You probably thought just keeping that one thing was no big deal, but you kept more than that.

You probably kept your towels from college in case you have 18 people come to visit so you would have a towel for each person. You probably kept the queen sheets you love even though you don't have a queen bed anymore because someday, you might get a queen bed again and then you will have sheets. I bet you even kept all of the doll clothes you had as a child so that someday your child could play with them... and then you probably had a boy, gave in to the stereotypes, and realized you don't have any of the dolls anymore anyway. Oh wait, all of this is me. Apparently I'm not a thrower-outer... I'm just a semi-organized keeper.

And so Goodwill and the Salvation Army are making a killing. I've even been able to fill the shelves at the local Food Bank - I hope someone really appreciates the artichoke hearts and capers.

Maybe this time the lesson of keeping everything "just in case" or for "someday" will finally sink in and I won't be going through this in another 4 years. Somehow I doubt it though, because I might need to sew a button on as shirt someday and I wouldn't want to not have that button laying around somewhere.