wtf?

Finding more damage

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

As we unpacked a box I packed myself and found a chipped mug, we went on the hunt.

Every box of ours marked fragile was opened and checked. Every unlabeled box (which they packed) was opened.  If fragile things were found, we unpacked them.

Thankfully, there was not a lot of damage. Considering we have my daughter’s antique tea cups collection and things like the China I inherited (a pattern that was discontinued in the late 60’s), that’s saying a lot.

I’m not too concerned about chipped mugs or a broken glass candle holder.

Stuff like this is different.

The creamer of a sugar bowl and creamer set made for me by my cousin. It had survived about a dozen moves. Until now.

And this.

20171212_1557511692205544.jpg

An old statue of the patron saint of music my mother gave me. It had already been repaired in the past. It’s beyond repair, now.

Still not as much of a problem as this.

Original painting by my daughter. She had even wrapped it in a plastic bag with another painting in her inventory. Something in the box dug into it, causing this damage.

So that painting is now can’t be sold.

Then there is the WTF? stuff.  Like this.

My daughter’s metal yard stick. It was in the same box as the damaged painting.

The metal yard stick was bent to fit into a size medium box.

Who does that???

Meanwhile, we had to shove everything we unpacked into any nook and cranny we could reach.  Which is not where they belong.

Where most of it is supposed to go is either blocked off by boxes, or not yet cleared of my patents’ stuff.

The girls did get some kitchen cupboards cleared and half or so of them cleaned, so we could start putting our pantry items away, at least.

We are in that “progress is going to look much worse before it starts to look better” stage.

The Re-farmer 

More moving causalities…

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

My older daughter is an artist.  For years, she sold her paintings at art festivals and the like.  These days, she’s focusing more on her online work.

Among the things we left for the movers to pack was her art.  We figured that professional movers would have access to the sorts of boxes and wrapping materials we couldn’t find at the local Home Depot.

As our stuff was being unloaded, I got my first warning that things were amiss when I picked up what I at first though was part of a dismantled piece of furniture, and it turned out to be a blank canvas.

Just the canvas.

It wasn’t wrapped in any way.  When I picked it up, I could see dirty fingermarks from any number of people who picked it up and moved it.

As the girls have been unpacking their boxes upstairs, my daughter found some of her watercolours…

painting.damage.1painting.damage.2painting.damage.3

There is another box of her stuff downstairs that we have to get at.  It’s been opened and her portfolio sleeve was folded up in it.

I’m afraid to look at see what else in there was damaged.

The Re-farmer

Insane

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

The delivery of our stuff was simply insane.  I am not up to detailing it, so here are the highlights.

  • They had a hard time with finding us on a map, despite my directions. It’s actually very straightforward, but we are quite isolated.  I did tell them, we are in the bush.
  • They came with a full size semi trailer.  After stopping on the road and walking in, I told them they could go into the yard.  They would have broken tree branches, but I told them that was okay.  If they went into the yard, they potentially could have had a ramp right into our front door for an easy offload. They said they would look around and decide.
  • They decided to go in front of the yard, by the small people gate, and that’s where they started pulling up, with spotters.
  • While driving in, they hit the power line to the garage.  They broke the power pole by the garage, which is now leaning of the roof. The line got hung up on the truck.
  • The driver blamed me for not telling him about the power line.  It was dark, but we have a yard light. The light is on the main power pole, which means the lines to the garage and house were in the light.  By driving to the small gate instead of the yard, they drove under the lowest point of the line.
  • Unhooked, the only thing keeping the line off the ground was tree branches.
  • They got stuck in a few inches of snow.
  • The driver yelled at me because it way my fault, and he had been doing me a favour by coming out in the dark.
  • Later, he came in and talked at my husband, demanding we call a tow truck, on our dime. If we didn’t, he said he would leave with our stuff.  My husband refused.
  • After more than an hour, they started unloading. They called a tow truck. The driver ended up helping unload.
  • We called Hydro. A guy came and cut electricity to the line and took it down. The pole is not theirs, so it is up to our end to get it repaired.
  • Between the girls and I, the movers and the tow truck driver, there was 7 of us working on it.  The girls did much hauling of things upstairs.
  • They were finally done around 11pm. They got here at about 7pm.
  • The driver apologized.
  • It took them about another half hour to get out of our driveway.
  • The house is in chaos. But we slept on our own mattresses.

This is what the master bedroom looked like.  There was space on the floor for the mattress and that’s about it.

But our stuff is in.

Finally.

The Re-farmer

Things We Find, part 3

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Feels like a long day today… and it’s not even 7pm as I start this.

We did a whole lot of water heating this morning to be able to wash up.  I dug around a cupboard and found a stock pot. After cleaning out the dead bugs, it was a big help in getting decent quantities of water heated.

It’s actually a good pot. Part of a newer set.  A cannibalized set, seeing as how there seems to be only one lid, and I’m not even sure that’s part of the set.

I now have two pots to cook with, along with the frying pans my husband and daughter bought. Yay!

There have been some other finds along the way. We have generally been avoiding the kitchen cupboards as much as possible.  My older daughter spotted this today.

We have ghosts in a jar in our cupboard?

Continue reading →

Slaying the paper monster

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

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