Settling in

It’s been three months since my partner and I moved into our new home but, because I was travelling so much through the fall, it’s only in the past few weeks that I feel as though I really live here.

While at times, it felt like a never-ending journey, we passed all of the big markers relatively easily: the sale of our house, the condo purchase, painting our new space from one end to another (a major job, taken on by my brother, Stuart), and moving everything from one place to the other.

Where can it all go?

Once everything was in the new place, we played a large-scale version of one of those sliding puzzles: to move one piece of furniture into its place, we had to move two or three others into any empty spot that we could find. However, with the help of friends and kids, we managed to sort the big pieces into their spots fairly quickly.  The art (how did we ever accumulate so much of it?!) took longer, but almost everything has found its place.

The kitchen, much smaller than any I have had before, has been the most challenging space to organize. It’s now up and, with an induction stove to replace the old electric one, running. With the requisite new saucepans, I’ve been able to cook some tasty meals and, although the space gets a bit crowded with more than one person in it, my partner and I have figured out how to manoeuvre around one another fairly efficiently.

We’ve encountered a few surprises along the path to getting settled. One, which might have warranted a little note from the vendor, related to the bathroom fan. For several weeks, we thought there wasn’t one. We also wondered about the purpose of a light switch in the tiny laundry/storage room that seemed to do nothing. Peter eventually figured out that it, together with a switch in the bathroom, controls both the dryer and the bathroom fans. To run either fan is to run both, and both switches must be in the on position, so we have to do a bit of running back and forth when we either shower or use the dryer. Deciphering this set-up was made none the easier by the fact that the fan switch in the bathroom is installed upside down.

The pluses

There is much I like about living here, strange as it still is to be sharing a building with so many other people. Not having to go up and down the stairs several times a day is wonderful. Having a small freezer in the freezer room — just a quick elevator ride away — is fantastic. I love the garbage room – an always tidy space with receptacles for each kind of garbage, and someone else is responsible for getting it all outside for collection. Mind you, more than once we have broken one or another of the many waste-related rules and have had to reorganize our refuse to satisfy the eagle-eyed superintendent.

The building is very quiet both inside and out – a welcome change from our house, where we were regularly inundated with traffic, construction and emergency vehicle noise.

The rooftop offers amazing views, and we’re looking forward to trying out the indoor swimming pool or playing a game of ping pong. Peter got the garlic planted in our small garden plot, which bodes well for cooking later in the year.

In our own apartment, the light through the floor to ceiling windows in the main room is breathtaking. We’ve created a quiet space where we can sit looking out those windows and just take a few deep breaths. I try to start and end each day by spending a few minutes there.

Most importantly, Kitty has settled right in. She enjoys the occasional stroll down the hallway outside our apartment, but most of her time is spent finding the sunniest spot for a nap.

Some advice

For those who may be contemplating a downsize in their living situation, here are some tips based on what I learned through our move, which I hope to be our last:

  • Be prepared. No matter how many people you hire, moving is a lot of work, mostly because you are the only one who can decide what you are willing to part with.
  • Packing is one task it is well work paying to have done by professionals. Our movers packed what would have taken us days in a matter of a few hours, and not one item was damaged during the move.
  • Stay in a hotel for the days surrounding your move. We booked ourselves into a hotel near to our new home for four nights, which meant we had somewhere quiet and tidy to go to at the end of each day; we didn’t have to hunt through moving boxes for sheets and towels at the end of a long day of unpacking, and I had a spot with wifi where I could deal with essential work matters before my new office space was set up.
  • Rent a storage unit for those things you can’t take with you but aren’t quite ready to say goodbye to. This way, you can take a few months to see if you actually miss anything that is in storage. If not — time for yard sale number 2!

Finally, and I can’t claim to have followed this advice very well myself: be patient – with your partner, your friends and, hardest of all, yourself. It will all get unpacked, and you will eventually find all your treasures.

Well, most of them, anyway.

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