One Last Look Around the House Before We Go...

...or at least, the "last look" until the tenants call us for some maintenance issue down the road (may those moments be few and far between).

We spent our last night at the Holland Homestead way back in August. This happened nearly four months ago (I'm posting this mid-Dec), but I'm clearly behind in updating blog for significant events - which this certainly was. Lily and Hazel sat on the porch with us for the final time. The yard was still a wreck from the prior months construction on the sewer pipes, but despite the wrecked yard, we managed to find renters who signed the lease the very day that we were packing up our U-Haul. Perfect timing, if you ask me!

Our friends Mandy, Travis, Greg and Susan came by to help us pack our belongings into the U-Haul. I'm not sure we would've survived the day without them. Greg demonstrated awe-inspiring skill at piling everything into a perfect cube-shape to fill every potential inch of space in the U-Haul. Clearly not a simple task. I chalk it up to his talent as an engineer, or maybe he plays Tetris more than I know. Either way, bravo, my friend.

Mandy and Travis followed us down to Corvallis to help us unload our things into our new apartment, which was about one-quarter the size of our already tiny house in Oregon City. Not surprisingly, we managed to have more than we could fit into the apartment, so we spent a couple weeks hawking and purging. Luckily it wasn't the rainy season, so we stored boxes in the garden space until we could figure out where to put things. So, this is a shot of the Holland Hobbit Home in Corvallis. We've made things fit by now, and there are no longer boxes in the garden. Hurray!

Keith and I spent the next few days driving back and forth between Corvallis and Oregon City to clean the old house and do other finishing touches before the tenants were scheduled to move in, just 5 days after we moved out. I took many pictures of our little homestead in O.C.

This is a shot of one of the first projects I ever did shortly after buying that house. We ripped up the narrow strip of grass and planted a fern garden in the backyard. It grew rather nicely over the years.

 

We definitely put our mark on that house, as seen by Keith's cleverly-placed declarations of love (many of these, he claims are hidden throughout the house. I could only find a few very obvious ones.)

And so, the era of home-living is over for the meantime. We are back to living the apartment life, which works well for a couple of students in a college town. If anything breaks or goes awry in our apartment, I just love that I can simply fill out a maintenance request form and it quickly becomes someone else's problem to solve. I can't forget that when something goes awry at the old home in O.C., I'll have to be the one to deal. But this whole transition has been successful, and for that I'm glad.

Risky? Yes. Nerve-wracking? Yes. Worth it in the end? I sure hope so.