Moving, Phase I: Prep and a Huge Mistake
The owners of the Waterford condo accepted our offer. Yay! Now we're waiting for a closing date. We have three weeks before we have to turn our current house over to its new owner, so we're under something of a deadline, here.
In the meantime, we've started the moving process.
The condo is all one floor, with no basement and no garage. The house in Albion has both of these handy features. That means the Albion house will be our "main" house, where the big stuff is, and the condo will be the satellite house.
And =that= means we'd have to pack all the stuff in our current basement and garage and haul it to Albion. We picked a date--last Saturday--and reserved a U-Haul truck.
That was our mistake.
Not the U-Haul. U-Haul was actually wonderful to us. I haven't rented a U-Haul truck in years, and was pleased to learn they have an app that allows you pick up a reserved truck any time you please, without potentially plague-ridden human contact. Additionally, the day before Phase I, U-Haul notified me that they didn't have a 15' truck available, but they'd upgrade us for free to a 20' truck. Well, cool! This later saved our bacon.
Several days before Saturday, Max and I cleared out both the garage and the basement of anything we didn't want anymore. It created quite a pile for the trash men! We packed everything that wasn't already in boxes and put it all in one place.
Then we dismantled the altar.
For those of you who haven't seen my photos, I have an altar in my back yard. It's made of rough-stacked stone and brick, with a little stone shelter for my two Goddess statues and lots of nooks and crannies for other objects. I didn't want to give it up, but there's no place at the condo to keep it. It would have to go to Albion.
Max and I dismantled it, stone by stone, and hauled the rocks to the driveway, where they awaited the U-Haul. I'm sure it's at least a ton of material. That was a job!
On Phase I day, Darwin and I picked up the U-Haul--lovely app!--and parked in the driveway, where we commenced the loading. It was rough, dirty work. We put the basement stuff at the front of the truck, rested, put the stones on the truck, rested, and put the garage stuff on the truck. The trickiest was the big freezer.
I love my big freezer. It lets me store all kinds of wonderful foods long-term. But you know the story by now--no room at the condo. I won't have easy access to it, and this makes the resident chef unhappy. Nothing for it, though. I put everything from it into a set of coolers, and noticed the frost that had collected inside. Hm! This touched off much work, trying to speed-defrost it. I used buckets of warm water and towels drenched in hot water draped over the ice, but it was very slow work. In the end, I hit on the idea of using the garden hose. This sped things along nicely, though I wish I'd thought of it an hour earlier. We loaded up the newly-defrosted freezer--thank heavens for Darwin's hand truck--and we were done!
There was exactly enough room in that truck. If we had gotten the 15' truck, we would have had to make two trips. Yikes!
Darwin refused to drive the truck, so it became my happy job. I hate driving big, unfamiliar vehicles. (Does anyone enjoy it?) But off we went! The drive was uneventful, just the way we like it.
At Albion, we unloaded. And unloaded. And unloaded. Max had to work, so it was just the two of us. Additionally, we had to figure out what went where. Do we put the garage storage cabinets against that wall or that one? Where do put the shelves? What do we do with the tall garden tools?
But at last, all the garage stuff was off the truck. But the boxes weren't unpacked, just stacked.
"Do we want to unpack this stuff now or after the basement stuff?" I asked.
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In the meantime, we've started the moving process.
The condo is all one floor, with no basement and no garage. The house in Albion has both of these handy features. That means the Albion house will be our "main" house, where the big stuff is, and the condo will be the satellite house.
And =that= means we'd have to pack all the stuff in our current basement and garage and haul it to Albion. We picked a date--last Saturday--and reserved a U-Haul truck.
That was our mistake.
Not the U-Haul. U-Haul was actually wonderful to us. I haven't rented a U-Haul truck in years, and was pleased to learn they have an app that allows you pick up a reserved truck any time you please, without potentially plague-ridden human contact. Additionally, the day before Phase I, U-Haul notified me that they didn't have a 15' truck available, but they'd upgrade us for free to a 20' truck. Well, cool! This later saved our bacon.
Several days before Saturday, Max and I cleared out both the garage and the basement of anything we didn't want anymore. It created quite a pile for the trash men! We packed everything that wasn't already in boxes and put it all in one place.
Then we dismantled the altar.
For those of you who haven't seen my photos, I have an altar in my back yard. It's made of rough-stacked stone and brick, with a little stone shelter for my two Goddess statues and lots of nooks and crannies for other objects. I didn't want to give it up, but there's no place at the condo to keep it. It would have to go to Albion.
Max and I dismantled it, stone by stone, and hauled the rocks to the driveway, where they awaited the U-Haul. I'm sure it's at least a ton of material. That was a job!
On Phase I day, Darwin and I picked up the U-Haul--lovely app!--and parked in the driveway, where we commenced the loading. It was rough, dirty work. We put the basement stuff at the front of the truck, rested, put the stones on the truck, rested, and put the garage stuff on the truck. The trickiest was the big freezer.
I love my big freezer. It lets me store all kinds of wonderful foods long-term. But you know the story by now--no room at the condo. I won't have easy access to it, and this makes the resident chef unhappy. Nothing for it, though. I put everything from it into a set of coolers, and noticed the frost that had collected inside. Hm! This touched off much work, trying to speed-defrost it. I used buckets of warm water and towels drenched in hot water draped over the ice, but it was very slow work. In the end, I hit on the idea of using the garden hose. This sped things along nicely, though I wish I'd thought of it an hour earlier. We loaded up the newly-defrosted freezer--thank heavens for Darwin's hand truck--and we were done!
There was exactly enough room in that truck. If we had gotten the 15' truck, we would have had to make two trips. Yikes!
Darwin refused to drive the truck, so it became my happy job. I hate driving big, unfamiliar vehicles. (Does anyone enjoy it?) But off we went! The drive was uneventful, just the way we like it.
At Albion, we unloaded. And unloaded. And unloaded. Max had to work, so it was just the two of us. Additionally, we had to figure out what went where. Do we put the garage storage cabinets against that wall or that one? Where do put the shelves? What do we do with the tall garden tools?
But at last, all the garage stuff was off the truck. But the boxes weren't unpacked, just stacked.
"Do we want to unpack this stuff now or after the basement stuff?" I asked.
"Now," Darwin decided. "It won't get done if we put it off until later."
I agreed with this assessment, so we unpacked. The freezer cranked to life in its new home. The cabinets filled up.
Then it was . . . the altar.
To be continued . . .
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