It looks like I’ll be closing on the house either Thursday evening or Friday morning, and I’ll start moving soon after that, with the furniture going on April 21, so I think I’m going to take a break from posting for a week or so. That’s just one more thing to deal with when I’m already pretty overwhelmed.

Yesterday morning I had the final walkthrough to make sure they’d done the repairs I asked for. That also meant I got to see the backyard redbud trees in full bloom. I hope they’re still pretty when I get there. Today has been the Getting Stuff Done day. I’ve set up electricity, water, and Internet at the new place. Now I just need to finalize the insurance and the wire transfer for the purchase.

I’ve already boxed up a lot of books, probably at least a carload. As soon as I close, I’m going to try to get a load over. I don’t want to get a bunch of new boxes, so the plan is to fill up all the boxes I’ve got, take them to the house (it’s about a 5-minute drive), unload the boxes in the spare room that won’t have any furniture in it yet, then bring the empty boxes back and fill them for another trip. Almost all the fiction is boxed up. I just have the reference books and other nonfiction and the “brag bookcase” of the books I wrote. That’s still a lot of books. Since the earliest I could get movers was the 21st, I hope to have just about everything but the furniture and the daily life essentials (the bedding, some clothes, enough dishes to eat breakfast that morning) at the new place by then. And then I’ll just need to clean the old place and get the new place properly set up.

When I was getting ready to move about this time last year, I was doing a massive purge, so I had to make a lot of decisions about what to keep, and then I had to take things to the various donation places, and that took a lot of time. For this move, I don’t have to make decisions and I probably won’t be getting rid of things (I may pare the wardrobe a bit further now that I know what I haven’t worn in the past year, but I may not worry about running things around to thrift shops before I move). It’ll be a lot easier to just throw things in boxes.

While I was out yesterday, I stopped by a couple of furniture stores, and I think I may have found the sofa (loveseat) I want. I’m going to wait until I get my furniture in the house before I make any decisions, though. I also need to get a washer and dryer, some blinds, and lots of storage stuff. I will be breaking my personal record for most money spent in a single month, given that I’m buying a house, plus getting all this stuff.

But this will be the view from my living room. It’s glorious at this time of year, and the redbuds will also have lovely fall color. Which reminds me, I’ll also be getting more plants for the yard and deck while I’m shopping. But that will wait. I never put out plants until after Easter. We’re still getting freezes at night. I’ll be planting morning glories as soon as the weather is right.

Now to tick the last few tasks off today’s epic to-do list.

Since I’m in the process of buying a house (should be closing next week) and since I got rid of a lot of my stuff before I moved last year, I’m going to be doing a lot of shopping for house-related items in the near future. I planned to essentially start over when I found a house, which means I’ll be replacing a lot of things, like kitchen gear, linens, etc. Plus I’ll need some living room furniture and office furniture. And I’ll need area rugs, since my old house had wall-to-wall carpeting and the new house has the original 1945 hardwoods upstairs and vinyl plank downstairs.

Which means my biggest distraction lately has been online window shopping as I look for ideas. An idea will pop into my head, and then I’ll find myself searching for that thing. In fact, I just got distracted by an idea for what to do about curtains for the sliding door in the living room. I can spend hours browsing websites for various stores, picking out things I like. This reminds of when I used to read the Sears catalogue for fun when I was a kid. I made a game out of mentally decorating my imaginary future home by picking out things from the catalogue. Or I would choose my favorite item on each page. I didn’t much care for the toy catalogue, but I loved looking at the housewares, all the bedspreads, curtains, rugs, dishes, and the like. I don’t think I’d like most of what I picked out then (it was the 70s, so I probably wouldn’t like anything that was in that catalogue), but I still enjoy the game, only now I play it on the Ikea website and I have a specific house in mind.

This is making it hard to write because things to look up will pop into my head while I’m working and I get so distracted that I just give up and look it up, but then that starts a rabbit trail of thinking of something else, and so forth, and next thing I know, I’m looking up how to install curtain rails on the ceiling and wondering if a two-track system that would allow me to have sheers for daytime privacy and blackout curtains for movie/TV viewing would work, and which ones would I want.

I’m not buying anything yet, though. I have furniture I can live with, though I’ll be using my zero-gravity patio lounger in the living room until I get a sofa. I want to live in the house some before I figure out what I want. I want to see where the light falls and how it feels with the furniture I have, then I’ll figure out what storage items I need and what rugs, curtains, and furniture will give me the feeling I want.

Buying all this stuff may be a challenge, as I live in a smallish town without most of the usual big-box stores. Even in larger areas, all the places where I used to shop for house things are now gone, like Linens and Things and Bed, Bath & Beyond. Sears is a memory. I don’t know what other department stores still exist. We have a Belk here, but about 90 percent of their stuff is online only, and I want to see and touch things before I buy them so I can be sure of the feel of fabric and what the color really is. I may have to do a road trip to the DC area where they have more stores and I can do some serious shopping.

I may look around here at antique shops, and there are a few places around here where you can get Amish and Mennonite-made wooden items. One nice thing about being in a “historical” area is that the place is loaded with antique malls. I don’t necessarily need anything of great value, but I may find interesting vintage pieces that fit with the character of the house.

In the meantime, I’m doing a lot of looking around online. Ikea has a lot of storage and organization stuff, which is giving me ideas for dealing with this house’s tiny closets (one downside of a cute older home). I’m reading books on home decor and doing Internet searches.

I may just have to decide that I’m not going to get much work done until the move’s over. If I do something, then great, but I won’t expect it of myself, and I can use this time to think. If I’m thinking about decorating as I try to write, then maybe I’ll start thinking about my story ideas while I’m packing and moving.