Move Me

ETA: We'll announce this weeks book giveaway winners tomorrow, when Tim O'Mara will be our guest. Be sure to tune in!


JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: The past couple of weeks I've been helping my next-door neighbor get her house ready to put on the market. (If any of you are interested in an historic 1840s house in a charming rural village in southern Maine, send me an email and I'll pass it on!) Two things have struck both of us: the enormous amount of stuff that people accumulate without even trying, and the irony that your house will never look as perfect as when you're putting it up for sale. In my neighbor's case, a kitchen re-painting that she always meant to do suddenly made the room brighter than it had been in years. She and her husband also finally carted out everything that had landed in the convenient-for-storage summer kitchen, and she finally set it up as a dining room the way she always wanted.The last time Ross and I moved, the Smithie was 16 months and The Boy was 6 weeks old. Closing, packing, cleaning and relocating with two tiny children was so traumatic, I vowed I would never move again. So far, almost twenty years later, I'm still in the same place. One of the things I found frustrating was the same phenomenon my neighbor is experiencing: we waited until we were leaving our little Cape Cod starter home to do all the things we had said we were going to do. The wheezy old refrigerator was replaced with a brand-new model; the stained plastic flooring in the bathroom was ripped out and a lovely black-and-white tile installed, we painted the upstairs and the garage was - for the first and only time in our history - neatly organized. By the time it was ready to show, we didn't want to leave!

I have very few memories of packing to move - nursing round the clock and severely sleep-deprived, the only thing I can recall is tossing books into milk crates while simultaneously breast-feeding my baby at 3am. So my sense of how much we had accumulated at that point is hazy. However, when my father-in-law died in 2002, I took the lead in cleaning out his southern California apartment, and I was amazed at the quantity of bits and pieces that one man could leave behind. After sorting and tossing, we shipped at least ten large cartons from Laguna Niguel to Maine - and had 32 banana boxes filled with recyclable goods to donate to the Salvation Army. What makes it even more amazing is that my father-in-law consciously tried to live minimally, buying little, passing along objects to friends and family. Another good reason to never move: with an attic, a cellar, and a large barn to use as storage, Ross and I have undoubtedly gathered enough flotsam and jetsam to star in an episode of HOARDERS.

How about you, Reds? Any memorable moves in the past? Coming up in the future? And do you tend to hang on to your stuff, or get rid of it as soon as you can?LUCY BURDETTE: I hope no moves are coming up! Yikes, it's such an ordeal. Still I've been trying to pare away some things this summer, imagining what it would be like if someone else had to come in and clear it all out. My medicine cabinet, for example, probably holds 30 to 40 bottles of nail polish, some of them crusty from decades of disuse. The only time I use nail polish these days, is for a Jungle Red Writers event! My next door neighbor moved just weeks ago. It was definitely traumatic. But her realtor recommended a woman who packs and sorts and moves other people's junk for a living. I have to tell you, this was a godsend. Maybe if this writing gig doesn't work out...Jungle Red Movers anyone?

HALLIE EPHRON: I'm a thrower outer and my husband is a bringer inner. I like to think maybe there's some zero sum game going on but sadly he's in the lead. So I like to think we're never moving. Never. Ever. Because if we do it will be ugly.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: We've spent the last eighteen years getting our house done exactly the way we want it, even down to, finally, an outside color I like.  So I definitely want to stay here and enjoy it! (Not thinking about needing to refinish the hardwood floors... Not thinking...) But I'm finding myself becoming more and more obsessive about organizing and cleaning stuff out even though we have no intention of moving any time soon.  I moved my parents and then my mother five times over the last dozen years of my parents' lives, and was absolutely horrified by the amount of stuff involved even though my parents' homes had never LOOKED cluttered. (I'm still using boxes of my mother's staples and paperclips...)

If we ever do move, I want Lucy's neighbor's lady!!! In the meantime, I'm definitely going to tackle those old bottles of nail polish.

RHYS BOWEN: The word MOVE sends shivers down my spine. We have quite a big house and we've lived in it since 1980--time to accumulate lots of stuff. Our children say in threatening manner "Don't you dare die and leave us with all this."  I'm currently trying to get John to go through the mountains of papers in his office. One of the reasons I love our condo in Arizona is that we started from scratch with a new condo and there is no clutter, no boxes of dubiously outdated Christmas ornaments or John's old school reports lurking anywhere. It's easy to clean, it looks nice and bright. In California every closet is full of things that should probably go, plus odd assortment of souvenirs left by our kids--letter jacket, T shirt from big swim meet, even a first sewing machine, that I'm too soft hearted to discard. But we have been upgrading the house bit by bit. All new doors. New toilets in all bathrooms. New hall floor scheduled next. Then a repaint job. But I'm staying put until they drag me out.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Moving. The WORST. Here is a confession and a writing thing.

The writing thing: my editor asked me this about my main character Jane Ryland: "Who moved her in to her apartment? " The thing that's' so brilliant about that is how evocative and informative it is. Don't you know so much about a person if you know the answer to that? Did they use a mover, or friends? Champagne, or beer? An incredible amount of stuff, or bare bones?Walk-up, or penthouse with private elevator? SO helpful!

The confession, and as a result the best move ever: A TV station I worked for was so happy that I'd accepted the job, they offered to pay for my cross-country move. No holds barred. (I can tell you thins now, because it was  long time ago.)

Listen to this. I did nothing. I said to the movers: Here. Here's my apartment. See you at the other end.

It was hilarious. First of all, it was a joy. They packed everything.  However,  when I UNpacked, I unwrapped cereal boxes, half-bottles of ketchup, rolls of toilet paper, used bath soap. They'd packed everything, without any thought about what might actually be needed or logical. I guess it was faster that way.

Gotta tell you, Reds, even so.  That's the way to move.  

ROSEMARY HARRIS: Bruce and I put our New York apartment on the market a few years back. We got rid of extra furniture, painted, moved a few things. (Wow...these closets are big! Look at that light.) When we saw the agent's pix online we thought - What a great place! Liked it so much we decided to stay. Still there.

In CT - I love my house. I'd love it even more if I had a basement, an attic or two extra rooms. And because of the terrain, it's impossible to add on. And will be difficult to negotiate once we get older (you have to see it...three levels, open staircases, lots of windows, i.e., few walls, rocky steps all over the outside, tree growing through one of the decks. I used to joke about parents signing a waiver when their kids came over. Now I'm thinking about seniors.) So we went house hunting. Saw an interesting place 50 miles further north. Then reality set in....we'd have to MOVE. By the time we did everything we'd need to do to get our house ready for sale...like the NY apt. we'd probably want to stay.
So here we stay. With frequent purges and trips to Goodwill or Sally Army to avoid the hoarders syndrome.

So, Julia. How many acres and how many square feet?

JULIA: I agree with Hank. Or, if I can't have movers magically whisk my worldy goods from here to there, I plan on staying till I croak. Let my kids and grandkids deal with the junk!

How about you, dear readers? Any moving horror stories? Happy stories? Do you flip houses, or are have you moved in for good?