Life - in the In Between

Brenda was talking about being in the in between stage of life here I do not cope well with this stage and we are in it right at the moment!

I hate the uncertainty of not knowing. We have been renting for the past 6 years and I cannot help worrying each time the contract comes up for renal. We will have been in this house for 4 years by next April and this time we are not renewing the lease. Why? I am feeling the need to be together again as a family. We have coped with hubby being away (I cannot believe that he has been doing this job for 12months now!) but it is time to be together as a family. Because his job is not set in one place we cannot just rent a house and join him so our options are limited to a motel (too expensive plus impossible with 4 children) or a caravan. At this point this is our option depending on a number of things.

As mentioned we have a baby due in 4 months so can't leave before the baby comes plus we feel we need to finish out this lease. So the time line is 4 months till baby comes, then 4 months till we move. We don't know how long this job will last or where the next one will be. This does not worry me as God has always provided a job (one less thing to worry about:). So what it hubby ends up back here for work? Well we are hoping to buy Godwilling a house but... it will be a little one! So I am trying to think about planning a move into a caravan with storing only the absolute essentials we need to keep. We have moved 4 times in the past 6 years and while I have sorted out and cleared out I have never been drastic about it. So now is the time to get drastic! I have been FLYing with FlyLady for the past 2 years and have got rid of lots but never really culled in this way.

I keep thinking about what to do. But yesterday got serious about it. When you walk into our home you are confronted with bookcases (this divides off the school room from the entrance see here). During the day the girls play here and it becomes a cluttered mess! So I am starting here. Zebra is losing her new bedroom (I know this is sad for her as she loves having her own space) but in the caravan all the girls will have to learn to share and work together so I am planning (training) for that now - all the girls will share the same bedroom. No toys in this room only clothes and really special things. The problem with sharing has been that Monkey gets into everything but now there will be nothing for her to get into - problem solved! So Zebra's room will become the store room.

We will be putting everything we really need to keep into storage (if we go into a caravan) and this room is a bit bigger than the storage facility's storage area. Obviously it will need to be assessable as we will still be homeschooling for the next 8 months but it is the beginnings of the cull! So I started this yesterday. I moved what I could and left the heavy stuff until Peekers is home (pregnancy does limit one so!). I also started going through our books. All of the older reference style books are going especially in the animal section unless they are fantastic as we have a lot of newer ones and the photo style illustrations are fantastic and after all just how many animal reference books does one need? Broken games, missing pieces, dirty old toys are all out (these are my things by the way not the kids - I was a child care worker so collected lots plus I have all my toys from growing up, as you can see I don't like to throw anything out!)

End result should be that no matter where we end up caravan or small house we will fit comfortably as we will only have essentials. I know that the clutter and extra stuff is affecting me and also making it harder for the girls to appreciate and look after what they do have so I should really have tackled it long ago but lacked the motivation to get drastic after all at the moment we do have the room to store it all! Unfortunately this thinking I am realising makes it harder on Hubby the pressure is on when we come to buy to find a larger house (which we cannot afford) in order to fit it all in so now I can remove that pressure and we will all be much happier with out it all.

Now that I have started on what I can do I am feeling happier about where we are in life and about leaving what I cannot plan in greater hands.