MOVING CAN BE “MOVING” – March 29, 2026

So many of us move. Few of us remain in the same home of our childhood. Does anyone?

I’m crawling out of the disarray of moving as a result of my 21^st move. That’s 21 moves since I left home at 19 and into my first home as a new bride. Granted, that’s 21 moves in sixty-some-odd years. Still, it averages out to be approximately one move every three years. That’s not even a result of any military relocations. Neither of my two husbands were ever in the military.

The pace of my moving has accelerated. In the past ten years since 2016, I have moved six times. That averages out to be one move every 1.7 years.

Ouch! That’s right. Ouch!

At my age, moving results in more aches and pains than those early moves during my college years or the years when my two boys were young and living at home wherever that home may have been.

Moving results in an array of emotions, feelings, and activities along with all those aches and pains.

• Excited – for something new.
• Fear – of change and all that needs to be done.
• Overwhelmed – with once again putting everything I/we own in boxes and finding new places for everything at the other end of the move.
• Anger – at having to do this again.
• Anger – at having to “downsize” to fit all our stuff into yet another smaller house.
• Depressed – at so much to do in a constrained amount of time.
• Immobilized – in the packing process and then in the unpacking and putting-away process. It’s sometimes easier to just not do anything than move to do something. I would say that it is part of being overwhelmed.
• Shocked – at the financial cost of moving.
• Grieving – at letting go of things, people, and places that are and were important to me.

At every point there is just too much!

With all that said, we have commented at several points along the way of this last move from New Richmond, Wisconsin, to Clearwater, Florida, that this is our last move, the final one before possibly the last move to a nursing home or the like.

If we are lucky, we will peacefully pass from this life here at this current home without having to pack up this life into boxes once again. Dealing with our STUFF will fall on the shoulders of our children, a process of passage into being adult orphans or that stage of adulthood of dealing with “our” lifetime of stuff helps move to having no parent out there in physical form, only memories held in moments of reflection.

The cold weather brought about this current move. Dealing with snow, ice and the cold of Wisconsin had gotten to be too much. We need to be somewhere warm. We had lived here in Clearwater before with several friends still in this community that we move back to. There is comfort in that.

This current house, as with many of the houses we have moved into, needs a lot of work to make it a home that we want to stay in and enjoy. This seems to be what we do. We refurbish and remodel. It’s our thing.

I have work to do. And, yes, there are still boxes to unpack and so many things yet to be put away. Best get going on “something” to aid in the progress of moving-in.