We are moving to the UK!
That’s the exciting part. Now reality is setting in and what we have to do is feeling overwhelming. We have talked for years about how great it would be not to have a house payment hanging over us and not to be spending all of our time and money keeping our large 4000 square foot house maintained. We have been longing for the freedom to see other places in the world, and we have been developing our online income to fund living abroad. We are not financially able to both become digital gypsies yet, but now we have the chance to take our first big step in that direction. Barbara is the more adventurous one of us and thanks must go to her for seeing a job opportunity online and thinking how it might be fun to apply for the job. She got the job and the job is in England. I have transitioned this year into having solely online income, and I am giving up my landscaping work, while Barbara will still have a day job, but in England not in Salt Lake. We will unburden ourselves of most of our belongings and our house. We are going to be well on our way to becoming Two Digital Gypsies!
In the next six months we need to:
- Go to England, find a place to live, and buy a car in April so that Barbara can start work. I will return to Salt Lake and likely stay here until mid to late summer before I can join her in England full time.
- Declutter. We have a house full of stuff accumulated from twenty years of marriage and three children, and we have a very large storage room in our house full of the stuff that Barbara’s parents accumulated in over fifty years of marriage. We plan to store just a few special items, but otherwise trash, donate or sell everything else.
- Sell our cars. We could ship one auto to England but have decided against it.
- Help the two of our adult sons who currently live at home move out this summer.
- Sell the house after remodeling, painting, re-carpeting, and otherwise sprucing the house up so that it is appealing to put on the market.
We need a plan!
To keep our sanity, instead of looking at the whole picture of what needs to be done, we are breaking things down into manageable pieces.
In our house there are 18 total rooms. We are using a a free online task management service called Cozi. We set up one account for the whole family. What works for us about this service is that it is online, has a to do list, has a calendar, phone apps, and a journal feature, and can be accessed from any computer. We will be able to continue to use it when Barbara, the master organizer, is in England while I am still here working on the house. Using Cozi we have through each room in the house and created an itemized list what needs to be done room by room. Once a room is completed it can be removed from the list and the countdown from 18 rooms to zero begins, which helps with motivation. The helpful thing about our move to England is that decluttering the house and prepping the house to sell it both happen at the same time.
In each room of the house we will asked ourselves these questions:
- Does the room need to be painted?
- Does it need new blinds?
- What furniture in the room do we want to sell?
- What in the room can go to the trash?
- What is there in each room that can be donated to charity or given to one of our three sons?
Join us as we get ready to move to England and hopefully some of the problems we encounter and the solutions we develop will be helpful to you if you are contemplating making these kind of changes in your life.
