Moving Out Day... The Day After Retrospect

It's Saturday morning and I'm sitting here with an empty apartment. My wife is gone to be with her girlfriends one last time. My job is to clean up the mess created yesterday during the move, and try to sell or get rid of the remaining appliances and furniture pieces.

Let me begin by saying that one should never attempt to make a move on a weekday (Mistake #1). Nobody is able to help. I didn't realize how much stuff we had, and had left to pack. We had over a month to prepare and a pile of boxes was quickly adding up in the garage during that time. But one quick look around the house showed that there was still much work left to be done.

Jay's comment to our previous post was aptly put. At first we had a system for marking the boxes. Four pen colors: red, kitchen;  blue, bedroom; green, bathroom; black, living room and everything else. Our packing of the boxes was Tetris-style, you couldn't find an ounce of air in them at all. But yesterday the gloves were off and the clock was ticking. "Do you need this?" "No, throw it out." Unopened bottles of cleaner that we got with buy-one-get-one coupons named Zip, Pow, and Bang. (those didn't do so hot a job at cleaning. Mr. Clean's Magic Eraser, however, is worth its weight in salt. Or some other confused cliché)

We found that Uhaul is overly expensive for what you get and the risk involved. So we did what our friends the Sant'Agatas did who moved to North Carolina, we called ABF Trucking. For less than half the price we were given two 6x7x8 cubes to fill and then they will move them for us. They do have door-to-door service, but we took the cheap path and  save another $300 by moving the items to the cube at the terminal ourselves, which meant an in-town Uhaul rental for $30. That was mistake #2. With this setup we are packing our items into the truck, driving it to the ABF terminal, unloading, and packing a cube, and we'll have to duplicate the process on the other end. I quickly saw the error of my ways (because of Erin's pressing persuasion) and opted for the cubes to be delivered to the door of the new place.

We were done by 10:30pm and crashed into our bed. I slept like a rock, mostly because my body wouldn't move. I can feel every muscle in my body all the way down to my fingers. At 5:30am I awoke and took a shower, couldn't find my clothes, or a light, realized there were no curtains on the window, and put on my robe and got the paper. An hour later, when the sun came up, Erin came downstairs to find me and the cat laying on the couch reading the news. She noticed my clothes, or lack thereof and had a good laugh. I went upstairs to get dressed and realized that I had packed my socks.

So here I am, wearing yesterdays socks, and waiting for people to pick up our old stuff. Craig's List is a wonderful place to get rid of stuff. Most things I listed for free, and they're going like hotcakes. I called 1-800-GOT-JUNK and they were going to charge me upwards of $120 to take away my broken TV and BBQ. A free listing on Craig's List prompted a phone call from Kevin, my new best friend. He comes in to pick up a broken TV and notices all my Goodwill items in the garage. He starts going through the pile like an IRS auditor. In one bag he found an old Vans shoe of mine and put it on his foot he liked it so much that he took the other one and his shoe and put it in his car. He continued to walk around with mismatched (and one untied) shoes. He left with over half the items in the pile now in his car. Thank you, Kevin.

Next up... Unloading in Tacoma!