Ikea has good, reliable free WiFi. It had been our intention to pop over and take advantage of that in a couple of days. Then I got notification for an operating system upgrade.
So here we both sit, our phones and apps updated, making blog posts and uploading things.
My daughter has been disassembling the magical fairyland that is her bedroom/studio.
It has been dusty work.
This is the mess just made by our mama cat, partially cleaned up. She knocked over my daughter’s jasmine. The plastic pot is cracked from top to bottom.
She did this with her face.
She has the most destructive face and tail, ever. If she’s not trying to knock things over with her face, she is catching her tail on things – usually charger cords in use – and dragging them down.
Tomorrow, I will have to go through our snow covered plant pots on the deck to see if I have a suitable replacement left.
*sigh*
As for the beast, as I started tapping out this post, she has settled down on my lap and is snuggling me. Being adorable, of course.
It’s a good thing we love her anyway.
Doesn’t she look so innocent?
The Re-farmer
Several friends here in our Co-op have agreed to take some of our larger items, saving us from having to try and sell them or otherwise dispose of them. Today was supposed to be the day to haul the majority out, across the street to where their apartments are.
We prepped what needed to be prepped. Brought the last of the parts and pieces to the main floor. We also cleared a wide enough path to access the door, which meant moving some things into the kitchen. A cabinet was shifted and secured, ready to go onto a dollie to wheel it over. All sorts of areas got blocked off, but once done, we would have major space cleared up.
We were all ready to bring out the first batch, so I sent a text to the first person about it.
Then we took a break while waiting for a response.
After a while, I started working on downstairs stuff. My daughter went to the second floor to work on stuff there. Still no response.
A friend came over to help and we continued to work on the living room, while my daughter came down to work in the kitchen. Still no response.
I get a text from the person we were supposed to go to later. Shift changes. We switch our plans to tomorrow.
Still no response from the first person. This is unusual. I start to become concerned.
After several hours, a drive through lunch (because our kitchen was inaccessible for cooking), much sorting and a decent amount of packing, I get a response. Sure enough, there were medical reasons. Shifting to tomorrow as well.
We move a few things around to clear some pathways, but that’s all we can do until the stuff is actually out the door.
End result?
A productive day and a house that looks like absolute chaos.
As we were working, my daughter made an observation that echoed my own thoughts. Unlike other moves, when we got to the other side, there is no simple unpacking and be done. The old farm house is still full of stuff. A start has been made to clear out decades of my parents’ stuff, but the change in timeline means most of it will still need to be done. Priority was to install a laundry room on the main floor, which was just finished. My husband is banned from doing any of this, so he doesn’t hurt himself more. It’s too much for my younger daughter. She has started looking around and most of it, she has no idea what to do with. Other areas, it will be gloves and mask work. My older daughter will make a point of bringing her respirator for the drive, rather than packing it, so it will be available immediately.
It’s all rather disheartening, because when we get to the other end of the move, we won’t even be able to set up our beds and unpack. We have to get the other stuff out, first. And with some of it, I already know that mice and who knows what else have gotten into them.
It will take us months to settle in. There is a limit to what we will he able to do in the winter, too.
So we will be going from chaos here, to more chaos there.
We chose this with eyes wide open, but still…
*sigh*
The Re-farmer
This morning, I dragged one of the broken box springs to the top of the stairs. After leaning it against a door frame, I stepped back into the room for about half a minute.
I came out to find this.
I like to think we made good progress today. The office is basically done; what’s left is stuff that needs to go elsewhere, not sorted or packed.
Then my daughter and I tackled a stack of boxes in the second floor hallway. These had been stored in the laundry room until the hot water tank died, flooding the floor enough to damage a couple of them before I caught it and hit the shut off valve. After cleaning up the mess and getting the tank replaced, they just never made it back into the laundry room.
I have discovered something about myself today.
Apparently, I never throw out bills.
Or notices.
Or bank statements.
Or receipts and newsletters and classroom materials or forms…
These boxes were still unpacked from our last move, when we went from a 3 bedroom townhouse to the 5 bedroom townhouse we are in now. There was 6 of us at the time. Of all my moves, this one was the worst. We all got sick with colds and what should have taken a leisurely few days became a week that ended with us just throwing things into boxes and bins and dragging them over the half block to our new home.
We had a very large desk back then, and it would not fit with the new layout, so we passed it on. The contents got thrown into boxes, but we never had a place to unpack them. So in the laundry room they sat, virtually untouched.
Until today.
As my daughter and I went through them, almost everything went into bins or bags for garbage, recycling, Goodwill or ReUse Centre. Oh, and the Eco-station. We seemed to collect old power and USB cables and cords. Almost nothing was kept.
By far, the largest portion had to be shredded. I found old utility bills from before we moved into the Co-op. There were credit card statements for cards we haven’t had for years. Some of the utility bills were the first to encourage people Go! Online! to pay their bills.
I was even finding hand written prescriptions from 2003-2004, when we lived in another province.
And tax stuff that should have been shredded years ago.
The tax stuff made sense, but why did I keep all those classroom materials from when I taught crochet? I haven’t taught formal classes in over 5 years! Class outlines. Sign up sheets. Pattern notes. Evaluation forms.
So. Much. Paper.
Some of it made sense to keep for a few years, and since they were in the boxes, there they stayed. But much of it, I don’t know why I kept them. Shredding from just these 4 boxes filled about 5 garbage bags! And there was still the stuff that went into recycling. Plus, this is after many, many more bags of shredded paper from the office and even some ground floor stuff.
As stressful as this move is becoming, finally slaying the paper monster is turning out to be a huge benefit.
The Re-farmer
Well, it’s official. I have completely finished clearing one room on the second floor. (My daughter has pretty much finished the entire 3rd floor.) It is now going to hold boxes that are packed and ready for the movers, as well as a few other things. Not the box spring in the photo, though. It’s damaged, and is waiting to be hauled out, along with two others we discovered were broken.
One of the things my mother dangled in front of us to entice us to move was the offer to pay for the movers. She has followed through with that promise, to our great appreciation. It simply would not be possible, otherwise.
The problem is that, because of the shortened time line, things we expected to be able to set money aside for slowly, over several months, aren’t going to happen. What we have is it. There is no more coming in until after the move. Our total of funds must not only cover the cost of the movers, basic living expenses (like groceries at both ends of the move), stocking up on prescriptions until we can get a new doctor, etc, but also the extra costs in fuel for the drive out, travel food, and those million and one little things that add up, unexpectedly. I’ve moved often enough to know what to expect.
Movers charge by weight. I got estimates based on the average weight for a 5 bedroom home, which is about 10,000 pounds. We are going to a smaller home, so I got updated estimates for the smaller size, since we would have to pare things down. Based on those numbers, we should be good. Even including the weight of our heirloom piano, plus surcharges for the piano and the (soon to be empty) aquarium.
Then I got two in home estimates. One by estimated weight, the other a flat rate.
Despite pointing out all the stuff we would NOT be taking with us (almost all the furniture, plus a lot of other stuff we would be getting rid of), we were still told the weight would be 10,000 – 12,000 pounds. When I questioned that, I was told he had been doing this for 20 years and was sure, based on experience. I also asked for the cost of a full pack, which was based on the same weight. The base cost alone was more than we have. The packing fee was completely out of budget.
The flat rate guy was actually a higher base cost, because he factored in the distance, plus packing fees were an hourly rate. And he estimated two days to pack everything.
We aren’t going with either company.
My older daughter and I have been purging like crazy. The only way to bring the cost down is to bring the weight down. Between the boxes and bins and bags we have already given away, donated, shredded and thrown out, I’m a bit surprised by how little is left to pack. And some if it will be going with us in the van for the drive out, not with the movers. We will also be packing as much as possible ourselves, so that if there is anything left for the movers to pack, it won’t add more than a couple hundred dollars.
In my head, I know there is no way this move is going to be 10,000 pounds. I doubt we were ever that much to begin with. We should be fine.
That isn’t stopping me from being in an almost constant state of low anxiety over it.
For the most part, I can look at the explosion that is the current state of our home, and know that most of what we are sifting through is not going with us. Intellectually, I know we will be fine. And I know I tend to over estimate. The last time we had stuff hauled between provinces, I had estimated the weight and figured the cost out to be $1000. The reality turned out to be half that. But in the back of my head is that constant niggling paranoia. Those two high estimates are completely overriding the much more reasonable estimates I got.
In the end, we will not know for sure until the movers go through the government scales, which is what they use to base the final cost on.
And that uncertainty is like a worm, wriggling away in the back of my mind.
All I can do is just keep on purging.
The Re-farmer.
So for the last twenty years or so, I’ve been at the he center of everything technological. Cell phones? I had the original brick, the palm pilot, a series of Blackberries, etc. Computers? I remember paying $1700 for a brand new *True Blue* computer with less processing power than my current watch. The true blue label indicated an “authentic IBM and not one of those evil clones that would come to dominate later.
Flash forward to today. Our new home has no cell coverage, no internet access so far, though we’re still working through that particular hurdle and I’m finding more and more excuses to come down to the local town’s Timmie’s to enjoy actual connectivity… (not that I’m going through withdrawal… I can quit anytime… I just don’t want to is all.
Oh, and if you look closely on the right, by the water bottle, you’ll notice my latest acquisition. It’s a phone modem. You see, The laptop I brought with me is relatively up to date, so it’s never even heard of dial up. I actually had to go looking for this thing fairly deeply.
The good side of all of this is that I’m *much* closer to family, on both sides, I’m getting a chance to say hi to one or two <COUGHSEVENCOUGH> barn cats and I’m catching up on some reading I’ve been putting off for a long time.
All in all, Life is good :)
Boubou
I was really hoping the snow would hold off until after the move.
Weather forecasts, unfortunately, are not in our favour.
Still better than doing a 15 hour drive (not counting stops for gas, etc) in the heart of winter.
The Re-Farmer 