Frugal Finds and Fixes: the Packing to Downsize Edition

What have we done lately that's a frugal find or a fix?

Umm....we found an an affordable apartment, to which we will be transferring such of our accumulated possessions as we are choosing to take with us.

Notice I did not say as many as we possibly can jam in.

The apartment itself came up quickly (we signed the lease less than a week ago), but we've been "un-jamming" for quite awhile now. I won't say that moving is easy, but at least we have a pretty good idea of what will fit. And what won't.

{Current Treehouse living room)

We are trying to "shop our house" as much as possible, rather than buying new things. Even in a small apartment, there are surprises, and places where we can try out things that didn't work in the Treehouse. Small example: the kitchen cupboards here go all the way up to the ceiling. In the apartment, there is about a foot of space above the cupboards. So a couple of nice almost-forgotten baskets are probably going to go up there.

Another example: there's a perfect corner for Muffin the Guinea Pig, right near the kitchen.

Another example: we bought a deacon's bench years ago, in our first house, but in this house it's always been in someone's bedroom. The apartment entrance has a niche for it, right by the door.

Our current kitchen table and chairs will take over as dining room furniture.

Our new bedroom is a bit smaller than the one we have now, and we need to use the shorter of our two dressers as a nightstand. But the only way that worked, with the way the door opens, was for Mr. Fixit's dresser to be on my side of the bed. We both saw the obvious answer at the same time:  let's trade (dressers).

I am very happy about the fact that we will have not just one, but two bookcases in our dining area. Plus the china cabinet, in which I just recently managed to get the dishes arranged nicely. Plus the cool retro-style glass-fronted cabinet that Mr. Fixit's grandpa made.

The nice thing about having come this far, in adulthood and family life, is that I know what we really use, and what, contrary to popular advice, should come along.  I know which combination of serving bowls we use for a "Sunday dinner." I know that we have rarely used the cups that came with our everyday dinner set (we almost always use drinking glasses or larger coffee mugs), and have NEVER used the saucers that go with those cups. So they went.

Our microwave is several years old, and we won't be taking it with us; we'll have to retrain ourselves to be microwave-less. The toaster oven is still working well (after the struggle with bad models that we had a few years ago), so it's a keeper. The blender and two slow cookers (big and small) are necessities. I'm also taking a couple of the more frivolous appliances: the bread machine and the hot air popcorn popper. I would miss being able to make pizza dough, potato rolls, and popcorn, more than I care about being able to reheat a plate of food. (We will probably go through less plastic wrap as well.)

Finally, a frugal fix: Mr. Fixit spray-painted a big biscuit tin brown, to hide some ugly printing; and that's going to hold my drawerful of spice jars. There are only a few drawers in the new kitchen, and they're all going to be needed for other things (like forks), so the jars will have to sit somewhere else, and the tin will corral them.

Stay tuned for more Treehouse moving fun over the next few weeks.