The Next Big Pivot: Saying Goodbye to Electric Blue 🚗💨
After a week of endless lowball offers, casual buyers ghosting at the last minute, and a flat tire to top it all off, we have a new plan for the car. Next week, we are officially bypassing the private sale stress and taking it to CarMax.
When you are liquidating a four-bedroom house and managing an international relocation, you quickly learn that your time and sanity are worth more than the Facebook Marketplace headache.
How this works when you’re on a tight moving timeline, here is our exact game plan to get it done in one afternoon:
The Online Offer: Before even driving over, we input the license plate, mileage, and condition online to get a guaranteed 7-day appraisal offer.
The Drop-Off & Inspection: Next week, we’ll take the car in. A team member does a quick 20-minute physical walk-around to verify the online details.
The Paperwork & Payoff: We hand over the title, keys, and IDs. If everything checks out, they hand over a bank draft check on the spot.
One day. One system. One massive logistical hurdle officially crossed off the list.
While the car plan is locked in, other parts of the move are still teaching us patience. We are still in a holding pattern with the bureaucracy, waiting on our final 4 apostilled documents to come back so we can lock in the visa.
The “In-Progress” Report:
The Car: Prepped, appraised online, and scheduled for drop-off next week . 🔑
Marketplace vs. Poshmark: Poshmark was a total bust (only one sale!), so the clean-out bag is ordered. Meanwhile, steady sales are still happening on Marketplace for our other household items.
The Visa Vault: Still waiting on those final 4 apostilled documents.
Madrid Rental: We had our first virtual viewing with our Madrid realtor. It wasn’t the place for us but things are starting to pickup
We are officially 45 days away from our flight to Madrid on July 5th. The house is getting emptier, the hurdles keep coming, but we are figuring it out one step at a time.
Have you ever thrown in the towel on private selling just to save your sanity? 👇
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Go Jonas Go! ✈️
A 4-bedroom house. 8 Suitcases. 1 Big Adventure.
|🌲Washington ➡️ 🥘 Madrid |
"A new chapter in a brand new place."
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The Truth About the “Messy Middle” 🌀✈️
If you looked at my to-do list today, you would be surprised at the amount I got done today. And yet, I still felt like so many things are still unfinished.
The reality? I have about fifty different balls in the air, and right now, they are all mid-flight. When you’re 62 days out from moving your entire life to Madrid, the “finished” moments are rare. Instead, it’s a constant state of flux—the uncomfortable space between who we were in Washington and who we are becoming in Spain.
It has to get messy before it gets better.
The Current State of Flux:
• The Marketplace Shuffle: 17 items listed, 2 pending purchases, but the garage is still full.
• The Visa Paperwork: 2 more document are back and uploaded, but the “Pending” status is a permanent resident in my brain.
• The Purge: I’m staying on track with purging 20 items a day. Drawers are being emptied, but for every drawer emptied, three more boxes seem to appear.
• The Language: My Duolingo streak is 245 days, but some days. Estelle is practicing more Spanish words. Some days it’s gibberish sentence but she’s excited to listen to songs in Spanish.
As a project manager, I want clean timelines and closed loops. But as a human moving across the world, I’m learning to sit with the “In Progress”. This mess isn’t a sign of failure; it’s the literal sound of a life being unpacked and redesigned.
We are liquidating the past to make room for the future. It’s loud, it’s disorganized, and some days it feels like standing in the center of a whirlwind—but the needle is moving.
If you’re in the middle of a big change and feel like you’re spinning your wheels: you aren’t. You’re just in the messy part. Keep going. 🏰🥘
05/01/2026
“It’s Thursday, not Thanksgiving” — Pantry Purge Meal 3 🍗🍂Tonight’s creation: A Chicken, Rice, and Stuffing Bake.
When you’re liquidating a kitchen to move to Madrid, you don’t wait for a holiday to use the stuff you forgot about last year. I found a box of stuffing in the back of the pantry and decided we can’t wait until November—because we won’t be here anymore.
• Inventory Cleared: One box of stuffing, texmati rice rice, two cans of Campbell’s soup, last box of boudin cheese, chicken broth, & frozen peas
• The Strategy: This isn’t just cooking; it’s Executive Engineering. By breaking down the massive task of clearing a 4-bedroom home into winnable daily objectives—like “eat this box of stuffing”—I trade the psychological burden for the dopamine hit of a checked box.
Tonight, that result tasted like a holiday dinner on a random Thursday in Washington.
We are 65 days out from our July 5th flight. The pantry is getting lighter (see 3rd pic), and the mission is staying on track.
What’s the most “out of season” thing currently hiding in your pantry?
04/30/2026
How I’m using Social Media to outsmart my ADHD. 🧐🧠Moving a family of four, liquidating a 3,000 sq. ft. home, and managing a relocation to Madrid is a logistical mountain. For my ADHD brain, it’s the ultimate final exam.
If I’m being honest, the threat of Executive Dysfunction is real. When the “to-do” list gets this long, it’s easy for anxiety to take over and for me to stall out. But I’ve learned how to flip the switch.
I’m using this Instagram account and my page as my Public Accountability Partner. By sharing the 28Strong challenge, the pantry purges, and the visa updates with you, I’m leaning into my “ADHD superpower”: Hyper-focus. Knowing that you’re following along keeps me from getting stuck in the “analysis paralysis” of the move.
Every post is a checked box. Every video is a commitment kept.
And to my long-time friends and family: I know I’ve been a bit of a ‘posting machine’ lately. Please forgive the social media spam! 🙏 While it might look like I’m just documenting everything, I’m actually using your feed as my digital ‘body double.’ Seeing these updates land in the world is what stops me from spiraling into the ‘where do I even start?’ phase of this move. Thank you for letting me take up some space while I navigate this pivot.
I figured some of you might find the journey interesting, but for me, it’s a survival strategy. I’m trading the ‘trap’ of overwhelm for the ‘rhythm’ of action. July 5th is coming fast, and we are staying on track—one post at a time.
Are you a ‘Body Double’ or ‘Accountability’ person? How do you keep your brain on track when things get big? 👇
The Word of the Day: 📺🇪🇸DIBUJOS ANIMADOS or Cartoons.
People ask how we’re preparing a 2-year-old and a 6-year-old for our move to Madrid on July 5th. The answer? We’ve turned our screen time into a Spanish immersion. 🧪✨
We’ve officially switched our “default” language on the kids programs to Spanish. While I’m grinding through Level 40 something on Duolingo, the kids are learning through “slow media.”
Shows made for children are the ultimate hack for beginners of any age. The vocabulary is repetitive, the characters speak clearly, and the visual cues do all the heavy lifting. It’s not just screen time; it’s educational. Mike and I enjoy watching with the kids because preschool vocabulary is right on our level.
Our Current Spanish Rotation:
• Daniel Tigre (Daniel Tiger): Perfect for learning simple phrases in Spanish. 🐯
• Bluey: The Spanish dub is fantastic for learning conversational, everyday family dialogue. Because Bluey episodes are short Estelle watches the episode first in English and the same episode again in Spanish 🐾
• Cánticos: This is our secret weapon with Elliot! The nursery rhymes and catchy songs are helping all of us nail the rhythm and phonics of the language. 🐥🎶
Michael and I are way more comfortable speaking at preschool level. So, if you hear us practicing, you know why!
Are you raising bilingual kids or learning a new language yourself? Drop your favorite “slow” show or song recommendations below! 👇
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