Heather Lucier Stanley

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1 Thing I Look Forward to When We Move is a completely new look and feel in our new home. Our buyer has purchased many of our dark brown items: the dark brown sectional and ottoman, the dark brown mesquite bar stools, the two dark brown armchairs, and the dark brown square mirror. The dark brown plantation shutters, yellow walls, and red accent wall obviously stay with our former home. I’m curious if the new owner will repaint the red accent wall? The red ottomans are coming to our new home, but they will be reupholstered in a new color.

So what is the color theme in the interior of the new home? In 2011 until it’s time for a change: grey, navy, cream, white and a splash of yellow. I am so excited. Recently, we decided on a navy leather sofabed from Copenhagen. The new house will come together fast.

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I enjoy waking up in the morning and walking around the downstairs opening up the plantation shutters to let the sun in. I love seeing the trees outside most of the downstairs windows. I also love walking by all the windows upstairs because I see trees!

1 Thing I Will Miss When We Move is having a tree outside most of our new house windows. I am happy we planted so many trees at our former house. Perhaps we will plant some at our new home too!

A fun take away from selling our house is: I really like plants!

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I am excited to learn more about taking care of plants and plan on decorating more with plants at our new home.

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On the evening of August 10th, after our house sale had been successfully funded, Alan and I celebrated with a bottle of pleasant red wine from Tuscany. As Alan said, “I haven’t tasted anything quite like it.” A good memory.

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After over 11.5 years of being together – 12 years in early November – we have upsized and downsized. We have skipped the 18 – 21, perhaps 30 years, of children at home, and well, we have moved from Young Marrieds directly into Empty Nesters. Although, truly we are not Empty Nesters because we did not have children to nest. So what is the official term for us? Your guess is as good as mine!

At 38 and 41 years of age, respectively, Alan and I are downsizing. We bought our first home, having approximately 2200 square feet, in a remarkable neighborhood for children, anticipating to have children. And well, it never became a priority for either of us. Not out of selfishness, but perhaps a lack of selfishness…In a nutshell, we considered everything: grandparents, careers, interests, personalities…and I could go on. Idealistic? Certainly. Unhappy? No.

Our new 850 square foot house is perfect. Alan even said, “I have an idea for the master sun porch [that is not part of the square feet]. “What is it?” I asked, curious. “We could put a hot tub out there, if it fits!” I responded, “Great idea.” How fun to have a hot tub off of the master eventually. First, we’ll pay off our small loan. Practical. We are good together.

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C-H-A-N-G-E-S…Every member of the family has adapted to the changing landscape in our former home. No master bedroom furniture means no resting master bedroom spot for any of us. Joey loved to lie down on the master bed. So where does he lie down now?

Joey has been uprooted more than Phoebe. Phoebe has always enjoyed lying down on the guest bed, and well, that is now the master.

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The new owner closed on our house on August 9th. On August 10th, I cleaned the downstairs common areas: I moved furniture, vacuumed and Swiffer Sweeper wet mopped the wood laminate flooring and sponge cleaned with water the tile flooring. I also cleaned all the furniture that the new owner bought from us at closing.

I feel that it is a privilege to be able to lease back our home from our buyer until September 9th. It is trusting of her and her trust in us deserves respect.

Although it is August and we are in a drought, Alan is working hard to water the grass so that all her grass is not brown upon move in: huge challenge, but the grass is improving. At least one person I know has said, “It’s her problem now.” I don’t like that attitude at all. In fact, it is shocking. Respect for others should be what we strive for every day. Without respect, we have nothing. Really.

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After tackling the attic, I started shredding all the old papers from Alan’s office that he was willing to discard. 11.5 years of papers? That’s a lot of paper.

Our original paper shredder did not work very efficiently. It only accepted 3 sheets of paper at a time, and well, with the volume of papers we had to shred, I started getting annoyed.

Voilà! Alan bought a new shredder. Gorgeous and it sheds up to 8 sheets, but it still overheated until we learned how to use it properly. Alan tested it out first and noted that it can shred only up to 2 minutes continuously and then it must have a rest.

Lesson learned: Shred every year.

Eleven days ago, I tackled the attic. Tackled is a good word for it: I got it under control.

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Play It Again Sports or Goodwill got most of the things in the attic. And all the empty product boxes? Gone forever. We have never repacked anything in the original product boxes, so why keep them?

The mystery of the garage attic has been solved. I explored, I saw, I conquered.

The new owner is going to have a clean attic and no junk from the previous owner (us!) to discard. Everybody should strive to leave no junk behind. One of my personal mottos: Do onto others as you’d have them do onto you. The only items left in the attic are extra wood laminate flooring and extra brand new fence pickets for her convenience if she has a repair.