Moving Day

Well, not today. Saturday. Four days from now, my family will pack up all our earthly belongings and move them from a spacious three-bedroom home on the edge of the country to a three-bedroom apartment closer to the city. I won't bore you with the details behind why we're moving (though I think they're very interesting, the friends and acquaintances who have been forced to hear the story would roll their eyes and probably choose to be covered in hot lava rather than listen to it again). But we are. And our lives will be different.

Living in a bit of isolation has really spoiled us. The only person who ever really came unexpectedly to our door was our landlord. We could leave windows open with little fear of disturbing the people next door or across the street, who were separated from us by a huge hedge of trees and cacti and a heavily traveled county road, respectively. Deer and fox sightings in our wooded back yard were a regular and much-loved occurrence.

Things changed, though, and now we're moving to an apartment (though it is pretty spacious, I have to say, and with much newer sinks and toilets and showers and floors than our 1950s home). I'll miss my huge kitchen with more cabinet space than I could fill, and island the whole family could gather round, and my very cool Kitchen Aid wall oven and electric cooktop. I'll miss the huge picture windows in our front room. The side screen door is also a favorite of mine, especially on cool days, and the views of sunrises and sunsets from this home are only matched by those I witnessed as a child growing up in New Mexico.

Now we'll have neighbors, which means kids for my kids to either play with or complain about. We'll be driving them into school on alternating weeks, and picking them up, which will be a long commute daily. Our area has a nice playground and a picnic area, and is within a couple miles of things we would like to do regularly but really can't because we live so far out now. The best part will be that the people who made our lives here difficult will no longer be a part of our picture. I wish them well, but I'm glad to be dealing with a professional management company and parking hassles in a parking lots instead of bulldozers and backhoes in our yard and unpredictable personalities.

If any of my readers have made the switch from house to apartment, particularly with kids, how have you dealt with the difficulties? What was your most surprising challenge? What about apartment life did you expect to hate but ended up finding endearing or even pleasant?