It took less than 2 hours to pack up the contents of The Lucky Penny for our move. So bittersweet!
Isha and I are Creating a New Tiny Cohousing Community and once we got the keys to the new house we began our minimalist move. Of course, there's nothing like moving to make one realize that perhaps one is not a minimalist AT ALL. So. Much. Stuff. But then again, the process of moving is probably the best way to confront and address all of one's stuff.
In the weeks leading up to our move Isha and I both went through our Stuff again. I'd been teaching another round of my Downsizing E-Course, which meant that my collection of stuff was pretty well honed. It took me less than 2 hours to pack the contents of The Lucky Penny! But since Isha and I both had our own households worth of stuff and we moved in together for the first time (after a year and a half of living in his and hers tiny houses). there was some decision making about which things to keep and which to pass on.
Interestingly, since we will have common space in our new community we actually found ourselves keeping two of some things to furnish said common space. One can opener for our new tiny house and one can opener for the new common kitchen. We labeled things as we went. Since we're going to live in the big house until our tiny is finished, most things joined us here, but there a few things specific to the new tiny house (like jar racks for the walls) that we tucked away till we're ready to furnish the tiny and a few things (like camping gear) that we stored in the shed for next summer.
We packed our things into a handful of plastic totes and a couple dozen liquor store boxes. (Hooray for liquor store boxes - they are small, sturdy, about the same size, don't have holes, so they are hands-down the best choice for moving!) And when the call came that we could get keys to the house (a day early! yay!) we bumped up our reservation of a U-Haul van* and met at the house to do a happy dance. Then we started loading up.
(*Nope, we didn't do our whole move by bicycle (or skateboard). We're not THAT minimalist (or badass) but we know people who are. You know who you are, and we have high fives right here for ya!)
Our move ended up taking 4 van loads. Two that night and two the next day. Not necessarily because we have THAT much stuff, but because some things are awkward (like my latex foam mattress) and some things are fragile (like Isha's surf boards). It was kinda like how when you buy tomatoes and eggs at the grocery store they sometimes end up in two bags.
So there we were, in our new house, surrounded by towers of well-labeled boxes with All The Things, which we promptly unpacked. Isha took a day off work and we managed to get fairly settled in in just that short amount of time. The funny thing, of course, is that when one has downsized as much as we have and one moves into a three bedroom house, there is A LOT of empty space. Our House is Too Big. More on that soon!