Tag Archives: moving

The Good and The Bad of Our New Home

It’s a bit of a switch moving from Poway to Yucaipa. It may all be southern California, but there are a lot of little changes.

Like apparently no watering restrictions. That was one of the first things I asked about, and was told there are none. Considering that all the neighbors are watering at just about any time of day, no matter how hot, I can believe there aren’t any.

Add in that the owner had put the sprinklers to 15 minutes of watering twice a day every day, and I’m just about tearing my hair out.

I think she did it because the lawn was going brown in spots. Well, that happens with poorly adjusted or broken sprinklers, and adding time doesn’t help that problem at all. We’ve dropped the time way down already, and this weekend my husband should be able to figure out where the problem sprinkler heads are and get them fixed.

On the plus side, Yucaipa is surrounded by great hiking. We’re near lots of mountains. Even walking around the neighborhood with all its hills makes for a pleasant workout.

There are also some really nice parks for the kids.

The weather is just a little hotter than in Poway, and there’s some definite humidity, especially in the evenings when the thunderheads over the mountains collapse.

I have tons of unpacking to do, and my husband is getting quite the “honey do” list. I need my clothesline up… discreetly so it doesn’t bother any neighbors. I’m not sure of HOA rules on that one, but I think we can be discreet enough about it. Not like any part of our yard is easy for anyone else to see into. Cloth diapers just do so much better drying in the sun rather than the dryer, in my opinion.

So do some other clothes, but it’s a more pronounced effect for cloth diapers.

The HOA seems to be pretty mild. I still need to get the realtor who’s handling the rental to send me a copy of the rules, which she seems to have forgotten. But lawns are decidedly imperfect in front of many homes, and cars get parked in driveways and on the street pretty regularly around here. I consider those to be good signs. Time will tell.

The house is huge in my terms, although not as gigantic as many newer homes, being 2200 square feet. That’s still close to double what we had before, and since we do want to move back closer to family we will try hard to not buy new furniture. We may need to fit back into a smaller home in a year or two, after all. Not to mention a sheer lack of need.

But the kids sure appreciate the space and the stairs for running around when it’s over 100 degrees F and humid outside.

I hope to get back to regular posting soon. I’m still unpacking and of course dealing with the kids. The older two have been fine, but the baby’s dealing with a cough and is up a lot at night, so I am too. But that should be better soon.

Despite all this, I am so much less stressed now that my family is under one roof again. There’s still way too much to do every day, but it really helps to be together.

I Guess My Attitude Toward Watering Will Be Different from the Neighbors’ in Our New Home

According to the realtor managing the house we’re renting, there aren’t any watering restrictions in our new neighborhood. That surprised me, since it’s still southern California.

I could quickly see that many people there aren’t too worried about water. They were watering in the heat of the day, with lots of overspray onto sidewalks and the street.

The watering timer in our house was set to water twice a day, 15 minutes at each spot. Yikes! And the lawn still has brown spots because not all the sprinkler heads are adjusted right or working.

I’ve managed to fix the programming part at least. We don’t quite have the time yet to fix the broken heads.

Still, the idea that there aren’t any water restrictions amazes me. I still intend to limit our water use, no matter what the neighbors are doing. Even when you’re stuck with a lawn, there’s only so much watering needed.

Clearing Out the Freezer Before the Move

Getting ready for a move takes so much effort. It’s not just cleaning out the garage, excess toys and so forth. Some ways using up as much as I can from the freezer is just as much trouble.

It’s not so hard using the things I froze because they were on a good sale. It’s using up the chicken bones and such that I saved for soup that is a bit challenging. Not exactly the right weather for that to be a popular meal.

I could move it, I suppose, but I’d rather use it up and have to restock than deal with trying to keep things cold during the drive up.

Nice thing is, it means I will know what’s in there and not be wondering later on what that mystery package in the back of the freezer is. It’s good to clean things out sometimes anyhow.

Glad to be Reusing Moving Supplies

Getting ready for this move is rather time consuming. I’m managing bits of time for regular work, but it’s tough. Especially since we had a scheduled, 8 hour power outage yesterday for some sort of work the power company has been doing in our area.

We still haven’t found the house we’ll be moving into, but I’m doing a bit of packing every day so it won’t be such a chore when the time comes. There are always things you don’t need to have out all the time.

The nice thing is that we have a lot of boxes to reuse. Many are from a previous move of ours, and in between were loaned to one of my sisters for her move. It’s nice that they’re still in good enough shape to be used for this. We also have a few boxes that my mother had from other things.

Packing materials will mostly be old newspapers, which I have my mother and my inlaws saving up for us. Why buy bubble wrap and such when we can get the newspaper for free?

This whole process will no doubt also be a reminder of how much stuff we have that is only rarely used. Most of it I really don’t mind, especially the various antique dishes from my great aunt and grandmother.

It should be interesting to see how little we can spend on moving supplies.

Minimizing the Moving Clutter

One thing about moving – it encourages getting rid of the junk. Salvation Army is getting a lot of stuff from us!

We’ve been working slowly on cleaning out the garage before, but now it’s urgent. Why move anything we don’t have to?

We’re also wanting to get rid of about half the kids’ toys. They have so many that never, ever get played with. That’s how it is with the usual excess resulting from birthday presents and holidays.

I’m looking forward to having all this stuff gone, even if by some chance we get to stay here.