Over the past year or so we have desired to move to a different part of town than we live in now. We love the area we are in now, but we’d love to be closer to Dave’s work to cut down on his daily commute. Plus, basically everything we do is on the side of town we’d like to move to.

We casually looked in to moving last year and even went to see a few houses. But the timing to actually move wasn’t quite right. I blogged about that here.

In December, things fell in to place for us and we are now officially ready to find a house and move. We have a relator that we are working with and she is very much aware that we are going to be extremely picky in finding this house and is very willing to work with us!

We are in no hurry to move although we’d love to be in the new house in the next 6-12ish months.

We want this house to be the house we move to and grow old together in, Lord willing.

So we’ve given our realtor a specific list on what we are looking for and we are willing to wait until the right house for us comes along.

Since we plan to homeschool, we’d like to find a house with a little more space. I do not want a huge house (because I do not want to have to clean a huge house!) but a house that would give us room to have a designated homeschool space in the form of a loft, extra bedroom or a space in the house meant to be a study or formal living room, would be very nice.

We’d also love a fireplace. No, we don’t live in Michigan but fireplaces are just beautiful and add an extra measure of cozy to a home and that is what we want our house to be. I’d love to be able to place our Christmas Tree by the fireplace and hang the stockings on the mantel!

Those are the main “non-negotiables” on our list. Shouldn’t be hard to find, right?!

Things are very, very slow right now in finding houses worth going to look at. Since we started looking back in December, we have gone to see 3 houses. I decided I’m going to blog about each house we see because I think it will be interested to go back and compare those houses to the one God had for us. I’ll be posting about these three houses in the near future.

But again, we are in no hurry. We have no real time table when we have to move, which is only to our advantage.

We will be patient and we know God will show us the right house at the right time and then we will move.

In the meantime, I am busy purging our current house! This is something I love to do and even look forward to doing every year! I go through every single drawer, cabinet, dresser, closet and room in the house and organize and get rid of stuff we don’t need.

This year I am purging with moving in mind. I am asking myself if I want to take it when we move. If the answer is no, then it is going to be donated or thrown away now. That way, when it is time to pack, whatever is there will need to be packed. There will be no thinking about whether to pack it, or not. That decision will have already been made which will hopefully make packing go more smoothly.

I don’t know, really, since I have never packed an entire house to move before! This is a first for me. If you have any tips, I welcome them for sure!!

I am very much looking forward to this moving process this year. Perhaps I am naïve and clueless and will loath this process after we go through it, but, for now, it sounds fun and exciting and we are hopeful there will be more houses to look at come spring or summer!

- Elaine