 Hi guys, so as you can see my background, we're downstairs in my kitchen and as you can tell by the title, we are filming sort of a closing episode of The Moving Diaries. I don't think I ever really closed it. I think I just left it with the floor not being done and I think I just left it at that. I'll have to go watch the episodes again to see. I don't know. I just transitioned into the vlog and left you all hanging. But after a conversation this weekend with, I should say, I think I left you all hanging because I didn't know how to end it. But after a conversation this weekend with a YouTube fan, subscriber, and Facebook friend April, I realized I know exactly where to end it and I would love for the whole process that I went through to help you all out there who may be going through the same sort of transition in life. I won't speak to April, for April because that's her personal business. But suffice it to say, she and I I think have a lot in common and for those that don't know and haven't watched the other episodes of The Moving Diaries, there is a playlist. I'll link it in the description below. You can watch it from day one. But the short story is my husband and I, after 26 years in our starter house, decided to move out of the state of California and up to North to the state of Oregon. He had the opportunity for a work transfer. We'd been thinking for a long time about moving and transitioning our lives to a place that was more affordable to live. Those of you who know know the state of California as a whole for the most part. Certain areas more than others is a very expensive place to live. If you don't know those stories that you hear on the news are probably right. I am from the San Francisco Bay Area originally, a Santa Clara County, a city called San Jose, California. I'm a California native. I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. Never as an adult lived anywhere else. When I was a baby, we lived in Georgia, but I was a baby. I don't really remember. I have a few vague memories, but it doesn't really count, right? My husband is from New York City, specifically Queens. He moved to California when he was a teenager. He'd been in California a long time and is sort of an acclimated California native himself. But when the opportunity came along, as our daughter was finishing college and we really thought about where we wanted to spend the next half of our lives, the final half if you will, we really didn't think we wanted to stay in California, in the Bay Area specifically, that the quality of life we wanted, we couldn't get there. We made the choice to move out of the state. Now, where were we going to go specifically? We weren't exactly sure to start with. We did a lot of researching and traveling and talking, and I initially thought actually that we'd end up in Utah near my sister Elizabeth. My husband decided right away he didn't want to work at home full-time, although he could if he wanted. He enjoys the community and the socialization you get from going into the office. Me? I'm an introvert. I'd be happy with my own company at home. Hello, I'm a YouTuber. Hello. So that limited our choices. So then we had to decide was he going to stay with the company? He's been with them a long time, and was he going to stay with them? Was he happy with that, at least for the foreseeable future? And if he was, then what choices do we have for locations? That was how Portland, Oregon got chosen. Contrary to my daughter's belief, it had nothing to do with her. When she and her fiance decided they were moving to Portland, we'd already decided on Portland, and we'd already started looking, and they had no idea. None of us had talked to each other about it, so that was pretty funny. So we chose the Portland, Oregon area. We are in a Portland suburb, and we love it here. It is a much quieter life. It's a much slower pace and friendlier. Every place has crime. Every place has stupid people. You can't get away from that. Homeless is a situation across the country. We are outside Portland, so some of those things aren't as prevalent where we are as they are in the city. But we are used to San Jose, and any of you who have been there lately in the last few years know what a crap hole it can be in certain parts. I do miss things about California. I miss Daiso. We don't have Daiso in Oregon. Daiso, you need to come here. Anyway, we don't have a couple of different stores. I miss. There was another one called Maido. It was a Japanese stationery store. And Muji, a lot of Japanese stores. You get a theme with me? I don't really fit in their clothes, because hello, I may be short, but I'm not skinny. But I love their Japanese stationery. We just don't have a lot of that. There is a Japanese grocery store locally. I haven't been there yet. I digress, anyway. There are a few things I miss about California, but for the most part, I'm super glad about the move. We don't know anybody here. I do have family up this way, but they're a couple hours away. My friends didn't live near me to begin with. All of my friends live in the Midwest, the East Coast. The closest one, I think, is Texas and Arizona, the closest two. I take that back. Lisa Swank lives in Northern California still. But none of them live close to me, and I keep in contact with them via the internet and YouTube and social media and video chat apps like Zoom. For me, that wasn't a big deal. To be honest, although I am an introvert, I'm still that person at the store that says, please and thank you. Can I help you with that? I don't have any problem generally making friends when I want to, to be honest. That hasn't been an issue. My husband's a Freemason, and although he hasn't been to the lodge yet up here, he feels the same way about it I do. We do love it up here. He is home more, so I'm loving having his company more. He also is only working three miles from home now. His commute is 10 minutes on a really bad day. In San Jose, his commute was an hour each way. As we grow older, I was getting tired of, as was he, spending so much more time apart than we were together. These are all reasons why we made the move and why I'm happy about the move that we did make. If you're considering this, you really need to weigh all your options. I didn't bring the other notebook down, but one of the other notebooks we have, it's actually purple, but we carried that around with us everywhere that we traveled to for a few years prior to our move. We would make notes about certain locations, the pro and con list. In the front of the notebook, the first thing we did was a wish list about our dream property and all the different things we wanted on the dream property and each location that we went to. I should say the dream property and dream location in the country. As we toured places and toured houses, we made notes about pros and cons on each place. That was another way that we chose the area that we chose. That may be something, if you're thinking about making this transition in life, that may be something that you want to think about doing. I know it really helped us. It helped me to write it down because I'm a list maker. My husband's very analytical, so it helped him too. We both would take it in the evenings and we would write in it. It worked really well. I would suggest doing that. I would suggest making some trips or visits to places that you're considering. Really weigh the pros and cons of work and social life and if that's going to work for you. Making new friends and meeting new people, there's church and volunteer work and if you're an artist like I am, go take a few art classes at the local art store or at the local scrapbooking shop. I'm sure you're going to meet like-minded people. Say hello to that lady behind you in the grocery store line and chat to the clerk behind the postal counter. I've made some friends. My jingle bells on my handbag drive them all crazy. But that's okay. They drive my husband crazy too. I like them. Anyway, if you don't know, I carry a keychain on the outside of my handbag. It has bells all over it and jingles everywhere I go. Anyway, there you go. Fun fact. Some of the things that made the move easier once we picked a place, help and support. Did we get support from everybody? No. There's still, see, I'm filming this in April. We got here at the beginning of September 2018, so what is that like eight months? There's still factions of the family that are bent that we didn't ask their permission and get their okay to make this move away from them? I'm going to just let that sink in. Because at 55 years old, I need to ask people. I don't know. But that being said, we had a faction of the family. My sister Elizabeth included. And I love you, Elizabeth. You know that. And my dear friend Cindy Utter and others, I'm sure I'm forgetting a whole bunch of people. All of my online friends, Cindy Utter, Peg Robinson, Vicki Brown, Karla McCants, Shell C, Leslie McGrath, they were all super supportive about the move. And as were a lot of you that were watching the progress. Close family. My sister Elizabeth was super supportive. My parents live up this way. They were more than jazz. I haven't lived within three hours of them in like 20 years. So they were very supportive about it. In fact, they helped us with the closing process on this house. So that was invaluable. I will say get help if you can, because help is great. My sister is all of us in the family are compulsive. We all are probably borderline OCD. I know I've been diagnosed with anxiety disorder as has my sister. What does that mean? Why is that relevant? Because she's more compulsive than I am. She's also moved a lot more than I have. So she is invaluable for me when it came to the process of packing at my house, the logistics of moving, of finding the new utility services, of clearing things with the moving company, of getting the rental cars, having an extra driver to drive our vehicles here because we had some things that didn't go on the moving truck, but we still had our two vehicles. Well, there's only Bob and I, so we needed a third hand. And of course she said, if you fly me out there, I'll be happy to drive Bob's sports car to the new house. She wasn't going to say no to that. She was invaluable. So I would say my first tip to you is get some help if you can. Hire a moving company. If you can afford it, hire a moving company. There you go. So we had the option, we were lucky enough this time we moved, we didn't last time. We were young kids last time and we didn't own nearly as much stuff, but this last time we had the option to hire somebody to move the bulk of our belongings. We went with United Van Lines and I will link their site in the description below. It's a nationwide company. We used a local to our area in California franchise, but they are a nationwide company. They did a very nice job. There were some things they couldn't or wouldn't move on the truck or that were too expensive for them to create and ship, like my paintings. It was really astronomical. So we packed some things ourselves and rented a U-Haul, put them on the U-Haul truck and then some things in the back of my Subaru, some things in his sports car and drove it all up here in a day after we closed. Everything else went on the moving truck. I will say some, let me give you some hints for that. So number one, interview a couple moving companies, get some bids, go with your gut instinct on who you think you can trust or not. That's super, super, super important. Look for referrals, look for reviews. We did all of those things and we chose United Van Lines. Boxes, packing material, bubble wrap. We have found that there are a lot of people moving all the time. So go to Craigslist, the free Craigslist site. Go to nextdoor.com. If you don't know what that is, it's a neighborhood bulletin board, virtual bulletin board site. And you can sign up for your local area where you're currently living and see if anybody has moving boxes or packing materials for free. People give them away for free. If they sell them, it's not that expensive, much less than buying them new. So try that first. Please of course, try your stores. If they let you, you can go into the dumpsters and look for bubble wrap and that kind of thing. You also can just buy packing material. In San Jose, we had of course the U-Haul store sold packing material, but we had a lot of stores in San Jose that just, that's all they sold was packaging materials. And you could go there for whatever size boxes and reams of paper and bubble wrap and all that stuff. So look for free first. We did spend a lot of money on packaging materials. I got tired of looking for the free stuff, but don't be lazy like I was. And there's always people out there and I know when we got here, we signed up for the new next door neighborhood for the new house and we turned around and we paid it forward and we gave away all of our packing materials to people who could use it. So that's the other thing. When you get to your destination, it's really daunting to be unpacking things and oh my God, what do I do with all this cardboard, all this paper, all that bubble wrap? And hauling it to the disposal place in your new day. You may not even know where that is, where you can take it. And if you do, if it's like an organ, it's not necessarily free to dump it. Some of it they'll take, but some of it they won't. So give it away to somebody else who could use it. That's probably a better use of it. Don't feel like you have to take everything on your truck. I know it's really tempting. Believe me, I have anxiety disorder. Remember, there was a lot of stuff. I just was on my last nerve about and the whole process was so stressful. I just couldn't let go of it onto a truck. That's really honest. I just couldn't. In retrospect, I should have just let them pack it. There were some things I thought they wouldn't pack because when we had the pre-interview for the packing, the guy who came by said, no, they're not going to take any ear paint. They're not going to take any ear liquids. It's hazardous material. When the guys came that day to pack, they would have packed. He told me, no, we would have packed it. So yeah, that was confusing. You know, there are funny stories that you hear about the packing process where you hear, you know, if you want to take the garbage bag can out of the kitchen, make sure it's empty of trash because they'll pack it. They will. I had a can of Clorox wipes and a cutting board on the kitchen counter at the old house. I was going to leave there and the day of packing, the day of moving, those days are super busy. Like the fact that I had my sister there helping me. We both missed it and we forgot to tell the guy packing the kitchen and he packed them, the can of Clorox wipes, which was open. Yeah, that was... So I have them here, yeah. He didn't pack the garbage, but that was because I emptied it. But yeah, so, you know, be careful of that. As a creative and somebody who has issues, one of the smart things that I did early on as I was packing up the art room was pack myself a bug out, an art bug out bag. It was my travel suitcase plus an extra bag of materials that I could have to keep me sane through the process above and beyond the obvious of my electronics. So some of the things you don't want to put on the truck if you've not moved in a long time, common sense, no personal paperwork, no money, no jewelry, no valuables, no computers, you want to take those things in your possession. You don't want them on a moving truck. So besides all of that and the electronics and the iPads, I made sure I had my art bug out bag. And that did save my sanity more than once during the process, especially since when we got here, I was able to unpack the whole house except the art room because we were waiting to get a floor installed, which took like three months longer than it was supposed to. That was a whole other conversation. Go back and watch the moving diaries that's in there. So that was a smart thing I did. Should I have taken so many art supplies on the U-Haul truck? Probably not. So you know, but you have to listen to yourself and what you're going to be comfortable with and what's going to stress you out the least through the process. It's going to be stressful. Resign yourself to that. No matter how happy you are about the move and the final destination, it's going to be stressful. So if you can't let go of things onto the moving truck, just be OK with that. Get some help and just let and just bring it with you. One thing I did as soon as I realized it was really real and that we want to bet on a house is I made this. This is what I was talking to April about last night and she said, oh my God, have you done a video on that? Well, no, but we will right now. This is a Moleskine weekly notebook, 2018 to 2019. It is I think like the five and a half by eight and a half size. It's like five and a half by eight and a half or something like that. This is for better lack of a better word. This is my new house journal or new house Bible. As soon as we won a bid on a house and we started the moving process and I accumulated a stack of cards and paperwork and stuff, I realized that at some point I needed to at some point in the process, you need to keep referring back to OK, what's that moving company's number? What was that paperwork they gave us? What was that information the realtor gave you? What was, you know, when is this truck showing up? When are the utilities being hooked up? What is the cable guy coming? When is the carpet cleaner coming? You get the idea. So at some point, instead of somebody constantly asking me all these questions, I started to get, I got a notebook and I started writing it down. I'm not going to show you the contents of every section because there's some personal information in here. I love you all, but I don't want it on there on the internet. But the very first page right behind here, you can see it says home details. So that is the mailing address and a picture of our new house. And we are in a A2A community with a community mailbox. So one of the things I put on there was our mailbox number. So I wouldn't forget. It did come in handy for like the first two months because it constantly was like, wait, what mailbox? I also at the during the moving process, I we stopped for Chinese food. I think it was on the drive up and I got a fortune cookie quote. It says love first, then everything will follow. I just thought that was perfect. So I stuck it in there. The next section is contacts. So on the next section, I put contacts. So this is where I put our financial guy, our moving people, the two people caught to contact from the moving company. We are in an HOA. So the HOA is number for the elementary school next door because they own the woods next to my house. So when there's an issue, I call them contractors, house cleaners, carpet cleaners, the alarm people, the direct TV people, Comcast, sewer, water, garbage, power, you get the idea. Then I have the to-do list of things that I needed to or wanted to do as we moved in or right after. Which some of these things have been done and I haven't finished highlighting or crossing them off. There's a section for Wi-Fi, for all the Wi-Fi information, for the alarm company information. Old house paint colors because I do really like the colors we painted in our old house. And I wanted to make sure to journal them. And as we move in and make it made improvements, I wanted to use some of these colors here inside the new house. And we had a large wall here in the kitchen that's on the other side of the camera that when we bought the house was blood red for back of a better word. It was more on the pink tone, but it looked like blood. Before we even had a stitch of furniture in here, I had a contractor here painting the house. That wall had to go. So I used this green color, which is called green silence. It's a Kelly Mar color. So a section for some ideas on new light fixtures, which I need to update. And we have some interesting light fixtures in the house. We've replaced a few, but as the time goes on, we need to do more of that. The information on the floor in the art room. Bug, the bug people. You gotta have a pest control, you own a house, you gotta have pest control people you can call. So we use active environmental and I have a section for them. So when I, you know, have an issue or I wanna make sure they're coming out for their regular quarterly service or whatever that I can call them. Business cards. So I collect a lot of business cards from different people. I may want to refer back to you at some point. So I collect them and put them in here like our state farm guy and Kyla from the budget blinds and the plumber and the new girl who's doing my hair and the veterinarians that were helping us with bandit and stuff like that. Then a section for the garbage company because Oregon does garbage a lot differently than we did in California. And I constantly have to refer back to these two brochures, which show you wait. Yeah, include like pages of what we can and can't recycle what goes where. And yeah, so it's different. So I have to have that in here because I refer to it all the time. AT&T, plumbing and furnace people, the ones that the old owners were using and other people who have been recommended for us when it comes time to get the system serviced which will be probably around August. I got people I can call already. Contractors, specifically contractors. I have electricians and I also, we have a new general contractor that we are gonna be using and I've got his information in here. We're about ready to paint the outside of the house and these are the colors we're gonna be painting outside. This is for all the doors. And so that's in here. My sister is a Feng Shui person. And when she was here, we went over some things about the new house and to make sure that the energy was good and that things were placed in the right place. And she took some compass readings and I sent her some sketches of the floor plan and later on she, there's a glue, a little bit glue. Later on she sent me a report on our house and we're the best places to put certain things to maintain the good energy and flow in the house. And she also sent me some maps with directions on them. I don't completely understand it, but I trust her. So, you know, it's all good. There's a, I don't remember why she sent me the compass but there are compasses in here too with the colors. I think it has something to do with the house because there's degrees on here. And then this, now the nice thing about this is this also has a calendar. Now these things up here, I put in the front of the book over where the monthly calendar month at a glance was. I didn't, I knew right away I wasn't gonna use that for what it was intended. So I used it to make my sections. And there's plenty of room in here to add more. And then the way this journal is set up, let me see if I can find the first one. The way this journal is set up then after that it has a week at a glance, whoop. There we go. And so I used those. Can you tell this is the week that we moved? To make notes on the left side is the days of the week and what was gonna happen certain days. And on the right side is just a sheet of note paper. And that's where I made all sorts of notes about what was happening that week. Things that I needed to be mindful of. Things that I needed to let other people know of. Things that maybe went wrong. We were only here a few days and we had our first HOA meeting. So I wrote that down. Plumbers, tree inspections, appointments with the insurance company to change over the insurance and more. So I can't tell you how invaluable it was to have this book. And this was in part of that bug out bag. So this never left my hands. I will say that if you're gonna create something like this to take with you along with whatever else you need to keep you sane through the move that you're gonna need a journal. You're gonna need a glue stick or some tape runner or both. I made the little sections easy, simple DIY way. Masking tape. I didn't, you know, masking tape. It's what I had. Yes, I have tabs and they were packed. Masking tape works. It doesn't have to be pretty. It can just be plain masking tape. And I did use a labeler. My labeler did stay with me. I have a Brother P touch and the label, the label sticker paper is that 0.23 inch. So it's like a quarter inch label paper. And that's what I used to make the labels, the tabs on here. I'm sorry, we're at the dining room table. I pushed on it and it just moved a little bit. Anyway, so that's what I did. And yes, it's fat and chunky and it's probably gonna get fatter as the year goes on. And this one goes through the end of 2019. So I'm able to, and I still am using it to keep track of things that are happening. Appointments, phone numbers each week. It's not nearly as full as it was when we first moved and the weeks all looked like this, but that's okay with me. But it does still come in handy. It sits out here on the kitchen counter. And everybody knows where it is so they can refer back to it. And if there's big pieces of paper, like HOA stuff or something, that people need to be mindful of it, I said it underneath the journal. And it's, yeah, there's a little, you can't really see it here, but let's see, right there. Yeah, there's a, the counter, the counter is up high up there for the island, but then there's a little shelf down here, like a telephone shelf, only we don't have a landline. So we use it for the chargers for the cell phones. And this sits up there, so that works well for me. I hope this gives you all some ideas of what you can do regarding a big move or a big change like this you might make. You know, don't be afraid to make the change as you're packing and you're deciding what to take with you and whatnot. If you're sure you don't want it, by all means sell it or donate it. If you're not sure, just like with the Konmari method, if you're not sure, hang on to it. If, you know, there's things that we brought with us we weren't sure about. Turns out it's a good thing we kept them because we could use them in the new house. There are some things that we got rid of, I don't miss them. We had a big patio set, table and chairs, and it was really nice. I'm glad we sold it before we left because it wouldn't fit in the new back yard. It's not that big. It's a little, big house on the little lot, which is okay with me. I don't like yard work. Anyway, so really think about what you're bringing. And, you know, if you're hiring a mover and you've everything, because you're really just not sure, just bring it. You can always have a garage sale when you get there. We did a lot of donating. I didn't want to be bothered with garage sales, but, you know, that's a personal choice on my part. And we just made sure we got receipts so we could use the tax right off. We knew we were gonna need all the help on that, you know, stretch that we could get. So, what else I'm thinking? One thing we didn't do that we should have been more mindful of, we, you know, had tax, things like tax records going back to 1998 to present day. You don't need that many. I didn't need to pay somebody to move them either. So, just, you know, as you're packing, if you've been in your house a long time, like we were 26 years at our house, as you're unpacking each closet and putting it in a box, just take a second look at things. And if you're just over it, even if you've spent money on it, donate it, give it to a friend, sell it at a garage sale, pass it on to somebody who's gonna love it more and don't bring the old clutter with you to the new space. I would love to see you all have bright, open, happy spaces that you enjoy. And if you, of course, have any questions, comments, or concerns, you can leave them down below. You can do like April did and direct message me and I'll get back to you, I promise. It is a stressful process. It's not an easy one. I don't know that it's any less stressful if you've been in your house just a few years versus over 20. The whole process is just stress inducing. If you have somebody like my sister who loves to clean and organize, that's her jam. She's a pro at moving. She's done it a lot of times. Don't be afraid to ask for help. The worst they can do is say no. There's no crime in that, but ask for help. I'm sure you have help. We have had help on the California end and we had help on the Oregon end, so it was great. I think that's it. I can't think of anything else. Think about making a home moving journal, a new home journal, home Bible, whatever you wanna call it. I will also say one final thought. Keep all your receipts. Anybody who's had a house for a long time should already know this, but some don't. I'm always surprised at that. When you get a house, you should be keeping every receipt for everything you fix at the house ever. It's deductible when you sell the house. Whether it's repair broken plumbing, we put in a new furnace and air conditioner at the old house, we put in a new kitchen, we put in new windows, we also repaired the fences a bunch of times, did some painting, you fix a cracked this, you fix a broken that. All of those receipts, you save them. You make a lifetime expenses report on your computer somewhere. When the receipts come in, you log them in, then you file them away. When you move, you take those receipts with you in your car and that computer with the spreadsheet on it, make sure that's in a safe, secure place because when you file your taxes, that's deductible. We did that at the old house. We're doing it at the new house. In fact, I've got a thing of receipts upstairs. I gotta work on it. Anyway, so save your receipts, whether it's the cost of the moving company or rental cars or boxes or that stuff can be deducted too in some circumstances. So save all your receipts and when you get there, talk to a tax man and accountant or somebody that you know that knows what they're doing with finances, not me. We have an accountant. He said, save these things. So we did. So consult with somebody who's in the know but I would definitely tell you save all your receipts, don't throw any of them away. And you might wanna just have a little bag in addition to your little home journal where you have all those stuffed in. We have a box upstairs. That's it, I think. Don't forget to like, share, and subscribe. Hit that little bell icon if you want notifications of new videos when they come out. The original episodes of the moving diaries along with one that I filmed about making a new sign for the art room and the house tour video of the original old house are all in a playlist here on YouTube and I will link that in the description below. You can watch those and catch up from day one. And don't forget to look for my link tree link. I have a list of links over on link tree and you can follow me on social media. My Instagram link is there, Twitter, Facebook. You can follow all the craziness I get up to. Sometimes it's not crazy, it's just boring, but sometimes it's crazy. You can also support the free content here on YouTube and over on Facebook, a lot of different ways. Shop in my Etsy shop, go over to Patreon. There's some, sometimes I load videos over to Patreon first before they go here to YouTube. So there's some of those over there. And you can buy my book over at Amazon. You can shop in the Amazon affiliate store. You get the idea. So go check out link tree. And the most important thing is to breathe. Just breathe. It'll be all right, I promise. It's gonna be stressful, I won't lie about that. Try to stay away from the chocolate. And if you drink, try to keep that in control. Little bit of chocolate, little bit of alcohol, not too much. If you're like me, you want to go overboard when you're stressed, so don't do that because you're not doing yourself any favors. Just go out and do something nice for yourself because you deserve it. Have fun with your move, enjoy your new space, and I'm crossing my fingers for all of you. April, good luck. That's it for today. See you later, bye guys.