weeknotes #17: moving 🏠

👋🏼 I have been a small pile of gradual overwhelm recently. The small news is that we are moving house! Or apartment, rather. It just feels weird to be specific about “apartment”, most people are used to the term “house”, I think. Maybe “home” is more generic and nice, because moving home can apply to any home regardless of the actual structure of the building.

I say small news because I don’t find it that big of a deal… this is the second time I have moved homes as an adult, but the last time I was moving out of my parents’ so we gradually added furniture and appliances over time. Now we will have to move them. Also not big of a deal is the fact that we are not moving very far – only about two blocks away, in fact. We still very much like the neighbourhood, the sense of community and the facilities and places we like to eat at are still going to be close by. Public transport – when we need it, anyways – is still easy to get to.

Although we had been looking for a larger apartment last year, the lockdowns made that difficult so we put our search on hold. It was not until we got a notice that our landlord is selling the apartment that we felt the push – and slight rush! – to continue our search. We were given around two months to move, which is extremely generous, but the slight rush came from us missing inspection dates due to being in Tasmania, and finding an apartment listing we really liked that seemed to be quite popular, so we applied quite quickly. We were growing a little tired of our current place because of small inconveniences: the lack of benchtop space in the kitchen to prepare food (preparing food on the dining table is a strange vibe); the small wardrobe, even as a damn minimalist, is inconvenient for two people; the lack of any kind of cupboard to put things like suitcases and an ironing board; lack of shelving in places like the laundry where you just want to put something small; and a major pet peeve of mine is how we can only fit a tiny ass bin in front of the kitchen sink so have resorted to plastic bags of trash basically being on the floor. 🤦🏻‍♀️

A selfie in a mirror of Nick, a tall white man with dark hair, and Georgie, an Asian woman with short dark hair. Nick is wearing a blue collared shirt and dark blue pants, and Georgie is wearing a black sleeveless studded crop top and blue floral shorts. They are both smiling with their arms around each other.
Probably will miss this mirror I guess

I realise I never quite did give an “apartment tour” of our current place, but it’s also occurred to me that I’m not a content creator (I know. I keep saying that. But I have a podcast.) and maybe sharing visuals of my home on the internet just isn’t my vibe. But regardless of whether I’m a content creator or not, I suppose, doesn’t have much effect on whether that is my vibe or not. 😆 That said, we are moving from our current one-bedroom-and-study to a two-bedroom-and-study setup; Nick seems quite keen on taking the study space, which is a small space without a door, similar to our current, large study, but half the size. That would leave me with the second and spare bedroom, which has mirrors on the wardrobes (it appears that the wardrobe in the bedroom might not have mirrors), and natural light coming in from the balcony, and he joked that it could be my studio where I take Instagram reels and start my YouTube channel. 😂

Likelihood of that happening is probably 2%. I mean, I tried having a YouTube channel back in 2006 (do many people even know this?), but I still hate editing with a passion. 😛

We move in two weeks. I have been filled with a slight amount of overwhelm. Mostly because there is a lot of admin to do when it comes to moving, but Nick has done such a great job of being on top of that. I’ve already started packing away things I won’t really be using much in the next couple of weeks. Since we aren’t moving very far, we’re going to move most of our belongings but have hired a removalist to move the furniture and appliances. I’m not lifting and moving a washing machine (as Geoff and I discuss in this week’s Toast & Roast episode, released today). Of course, this process comes with the natural course of decluttering, which my friend Lilian says I am always doing. There you go folks, if you didn’t believe that I was a minimalist, perhaps it seems that way now. 😛

Don’t be silly, that’s not all there is to it, I’m also all about living in the present and having space to enjoy life and not stuff. With that said, it’s Monday morning and I’m gonna leave this blog post now to go and enjoy some of said life before I have to go to work.

Actually, I enjoy work too. Because it’s part of my life and there is no such thing as work/life balance… haha I’ll cut it out with my quips now. Bye. xx

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Congratulations on the move! As someone who has moved often, I absolutely hate moves.

It’s awesome that you two will have more space to spread out and be creative! Also, I totally wish I had your minimalist/decluttering capabilities. I find it very hard to do at the moment with a toddler!

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I moved in December. It wasn’t initially a Big Deal for me so much as it was my desperation to escape that hellhole. My apartment now is pleasant, and I do want to give a tour of it once it’s furnished and unpacked, just because that’s always been my kind of thing. XD I didn’t care to at my first apartment because it was so bad.

Hope your move isn’t super stressful! Also glad that Nick is helping throughout the process :)

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Congratulations on moving to a bigger place! Moving to a new home is always a great idea, as it gives you the opportunity to reminisce over memories made and to be grateful for the opportunity to make new ones. Having a room with lots of natural light would be great for so many things – perhaps you could use it for your home office and fill it with plants…IDK if you’re into plants being a semi-minimalist (I’m never certain if plants fit into a minimalist lifestyle.) and all. You could also use it as a home gym/yoga studio. Also, I noticed that you have inspections? I can’t imagine that they’re anything like the ones I have – where someone comes in and criticizes your cleaning AND they always seem to do this on days when it’s just stopped raining. LOL Once again, congratulations on your new home!

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I never quite got into plants, but amusingly enough, having more natural light in the study space does make me want to have some. We have a few on the balcony now, but I’m keen on getting some that work indoors and need a little less maintenance. You can still “collect” or have a lot of items related to a hobby if you’re a minimalist – just gotta be intentional with them all. 😆

We have inspections from both sides – from the property manager to check for the landlord, and those organised so that people looking for a new home can see if the home is suitable for them. The ones we missed was the latter. We weren’t going to be judging the people currently living there, haha, we would have been looking to see if the space was suitable living for us.

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