Excerpts of the Craig Chronicles: Buying a House and Moving

I started looking at houses online back in December of 2016. We didn't start going to tour the houses until April/May of 2017. Houses were going so fast, that nothing stayed on the market for more than a couple days. Also, most everything I wanted was out of our price range. Finally we put an offer on a few different houses, and picked the one we bought. 4910 W Barton Park Dr, West Jordan, UT. While there are things that I wanted that it doesn't have, for our first home, it meets our needs. It is really nice to have a home, a garage, and a yard all connected together and fenced. The kids are really liking it. We signed the papers on May 8th, and got the keys that next weekend (they needed a couple days to move out of the house). They left the house so dirty. I was furious when we walked through that next weekend. The fridge was disgusting (they left it here when in the contract it said they were taking it), and nothing was swept or mopped. The bathrooms weren't cleaned. So one day we started bringing some stuff over because Jake and my dad were painting the house, and I ended up cleaning the bathrooms that way they were usable. Jake and my dad spent 3 weeks (only a few nights a week) painting. They painted the master bedroom (which was a dark blue) to gray and orange, the living room, the kitchen, & the bathrooms. The two kids rooms were already painted, and while I want to paint a pink wall in the girls room, it just didn't happen before we moved it. They also painted all the ceilings (except for the kids rooms). After we moved in, it took Jake a few weeks, but he painted the garage red, and put up rubber trim.

Our realtor and the sellers realtor ended up paying for a cleaning company to come, so they came two days before we moved and they cleaned the bathrooms, and the fridge, oven, and sink areas.

Because Lydia and Josh flew in to help us move, they were over here with us while they ladys were cleaning, so I rented a carpet cleaner, and Lydia cleaned the carpets while I watched the littles.

Lydia was amazing in helping me pack. Before she got there it felt like I was making good progress. The plan was to move on Saturday, June 10th. She got in on Wednesday, June 7th. Lydia got here and she packed up the kitchen, hallway closet, and my bedroom all before Friday night. Without her I don't know if I would have been packed in time.

To help keep us organized though Jake and I planned to put all the packed boxes in the garage. So before we could do that, we rented a U-haul, and Jake packed up the garage and we moved everything over to the house. That allowed us to keep the amount of chaos inside limited.
Every night for a week before we moved Jake and I moved the boxes to the garage.

When Saturday (The 10th of June) came Spencer got the apartment an hour early, so he and Jake took the bunk beds and my bed apart. Then they left to go pick up the U-Haul. During that time, members from the ward Elders Quorum, and my aunts and uncles and cousins came. Since Jake wasn't back with the U-haul, I just had everyone take the things from the house out to the garage and the grassy area near the garage. By the time Jake got there the apartment was nearly empty. Just random bits and bobs left and cleaning stuff. So it only took an hour and half to empty the apartment and load the truck. Then my family came to the house to help us empty the truck.

Lydia left before us in the car with William and Josh (Julie-my aunt- took the girls so they weren't underfoot. She brought them back early though because they weren't feeling well). She had to drop off the dogs for their grooming appointment we had made for them. That way they were getting clean and were out of the way while moving.

So my family met us at the house, and of course they all beat the truck over there. So we were waiting for about 15 minutes, during which time we had emptied my dads suburban (which we had used to transport the computers and tvs and picture frames). It only took an hour to unload the truck and then everyone left because they had other plans. Jason (my uncle) showed up during the unloading process (he had just gotten off work and headed over to help) and so he stayed and helped get all the furniture set up.

So a month later, not all the boxes are unloaded, but we are definitely making progress!

Update: Posting this 3 months after we moved in. Still don't have any decorations or pictures up. The play room is all clean and put together. It is lacking detailed organization-everything is just in big containers. But all the toys are off the floor! The garage was clean for a while, now as we have been cleaning out the car all that stuff just ends up in the garage. The kitchen is all rearranged and put together. The bedrooms are all put together. In fact in the whole house there are only 6 boxes left, and those are made up of random bits and bobs that haven't been put in a home yet.