As far as house projects go this year, 2018 has been a significant year.  Probably my most productive yet.  In relative significance to the prior projects, the next project is the most disruptive.  While changing the HVAC unit and resurfacing the pool are huge, expensive projects, reflooring half the house is just massive.

Six spaces in four rooms are going to be converted from carpet to laminate.  The carpet has been in place probably as long as the house has been around, so… 25 years or so?  It’s time to update that.  The contractor came out and gave me a quote, which I just accepted and we set an estimated install date two weeks out.

From the sounds of the work plan, it sounds like they are going to do one room per day.  That includes moving the furniture in and out of the room.  The only thing I have to handle is getting things up off the floor and removing breakables and personal items.  The master closet is going to be all on me because the wardrobe cabinets were actually assembled in the room, you can’t move them in or out of the room assembled.  One other thing I committed to was packing up my CDs from the tower racks.  I don’t see any way of moving those towers with the CDs in place.  To accommodate that move, I bought some magazine boxes on the recommendation of a poster on a forum I frequent.  They were a great fit.

A lot of people despise packing.  I am one of those people who actually doesn’t mind it.  Well, unless the deadline is too close and I’m scrambling, but otherwise, I like packing up.  The process is a physical affirmation that change is coming, and that change should bring excitement and hope for the future.  In the near term, this means I’m getting a new floor; in the mid term, it means I’m going to be in a totally new environment.

Packing up is like making a deposit on your future.  If you don’t follow through with your plan, you lose all the effort you put out packing up.  Right now, all my music gear is packed and stored.  Now my CDs are packed and stored.  The more I pack, the less I have keeping me in my place.  And of course, packing provides some time of reflection, to make sure you really need to hold on to that thing anymore.

With the plan of moving, comes a lot of little individual preparations for moving.  The one I am currently working on is finance.  Not the financing of moving, but my collection of financial accounts.

I’ve always had a presence at a local brick and mortar financial institution, but I’ve also had long-running accounts at online-only banks as well.  This recent move has me convinced to go 100% online.  The reason for this is two-fold.  First, there are no national-level physical banks that I trust.  My current bank is a local credit union, and while I do love them, they aren’t going to be in my new location.  Second, there is little compelling need to tie yourself to a physical bank anymore.

To expand on those points, I wanted a physical bank in case I needed to go and talk to someone about my account.  In my years with the bank, that has never happened.  I also wanted to have the bank’s ATM network available to me.  In my specific case, I agreed to a $1500 min balance to access a much wider network of ATMs without fees.  But my newly chosen online bank will reimburse me up to $10 in ATM fees.  I don’t hit the ATM often, so that’s plenty.  And of course, they also have a wide network of no-fee ATM’s, too.

But here’s the real motivator.  Like I just said, I have at least $1500 tied up in my checking account, earning very little interest.  I have the bulk of my money in online savings accounts earning 2% interest.  But I was recently introduced to T-Mobile Money, which will pay 4% interest on a checking account up to $3000.  That’s double the rate of my savings account and who knows how much more than my current checking account.  So my plan is to keep around $3k in my new T-Mobile account and the rest in my online savings.  No more $1500 (actually more with the ebb and flow of the balance) missing out on interest.

I’ve been through the migration process before, but it’s been a number of years.  After setting up the new checking account, you need to link other accounts to it so you can do transfers.  That takes a couple of days.  You have to set up bill pay accounts on the new account and disable automatic payments on the old account.  There’s a rule I keep to on my bill pay setup.  I never authorize anyone to pull from my checking account.  I will always push payment from the checking account.  I will allow charging of my credit cards, since I have a means to dispute the charge, but no one is allowed to touch my cash.  Then finally, I have to modify my direct deposit to go to the new account.

After all these changes, then it becomes a watch and wait game.  I have to figure out which account needs money transferred to handle the upcoming bills until everything is transitioned.  It’s a little tense.  But by next month, I’ll be on my own, online, and free to go anywhere.

Last week, I started the process of relocating my stuff from the bedroom that had served as my office into the lanai which would serve as my new office.  It was a surprisingly difficult effort.  What should have taken a couple of hours or so took many days.  But, although surprising to me, it’s also consistent with some recent difficulties I’ve had in regards to motivation and exhaustion.

On one particular day, after moving a couple of pieces and giving up, I reflected on the moving process.  Why was it so difficult?  There was a time in my youth that I would rearrange my living area nearly monthly.  I loved the different possibilities and the change it brought.  Now it just seemed I wanted things to stay the same.  That’s kind of depressing to think about, which is ironic because it’s depression that’s been holding me back from everything lately.

Without dwelling on that point, this is more about changes.  On a smaller scale, I have to deal with the moving of my stuff between rooms, which will require putting some things into temporary storage.  On a bigger scale, the GF is going through the same thing by moving her stuff to my house, which has to be even more overwhelming and disheartening considering how many things of hers will need to be stored.  And overarching all of this now is our near-term plans to move to another state.

So, for whatever stress I might be feeling about moving my shit in my house, it’s nothing compared to what needs done to move to another place.  First and most importantly, it reprioritizes the improvements that need done to the house in order to maximize resale value.  Some things just can’t be done in time and some may be too expensive to get return on the cost.  But, it’s a real kick in the ass to start doing something.  I always work best on a deadline.

The big move eclipses the small move and the sacrifices become acceptable and even encouraging.  I’m packing up all my music gear, not because I don’t have space for it in my new office but instead because we’re moving out.  It’s not losing out on anything, it’s preparation.  I shouldn’t feel constrained by my new office because I’m not going to be there for very long.  And there’s going to be a period of time where things are going to be even more cramped until we find the ideal house in our new city.

And while moving rooms was stressful to me and I was wondering why that was the case when I used to love change. moving cities is quickly becoming an exciting prospect, despite the looming effort that remains in this house.  I think it might because I’ve found a “why.”  Why am I doing all this stuff to the house, what does it matter?  Well, right now it matters greatly to the future owner of the house.  And at the same time, I’m going to shed anything I might regret doing in this house and the GF and I will start with a clean slate, on equal footing in a new place.