Moving day!
Official moving day has been booked for a few weeks from now. YAY! It's pretty exciting.
Official moving day has been booked for a few weeks from now. YAY! It's pretty exciting.
Buh. So, when you buy an appliance or electronic device, of course, the manufacturer tells you to keep the original packaging -- you'll need it if you have to ship back the item within the warranty period. So, being the good do-bee I am, I keep 'em. And of course, it's also an offering to the gods of physics -- the second you discard the packaging, the item will, of course, break.
So tonight was a big night. We attacked the pile of boxen in the basement.
Anything that was still in warranty stayed. If it had packing in it, the packing stayed, too. (This included just a small handful of things.) Anything that was out of warranty was gone.
There is now a three foot high pile of flatened cardboard boxen on the floor, and six big black garbage bags full of styrofoam and other packing materials (which, unfortunately, isn't recyclable here). And the space under the stairs in the basement is essentially empty! It's pretty remarkable, actually. And Rich and I each injured ourselves only once! He on a staple, I on my knife. Don't ask. Mine required a small bandage, his required a kiss.
Now there's forty-seven square yards of cardboard to be brought to the transfer station. At least they take recyclables for free.
Also, one should note that Rich's office is fully functional, with the final desk, computers, and stereo. AND the TV downstairs is hooked into cable now, so I can watch/listen while I'm sewing. AND the lifetime-subscription TiVo will be hooked up down there soon -- sometimes I think it's getting a bit ridiculous, frankly, but then I realize how right it really is.
The real question is, how many TiVos does one house need / can one house support?
Since we're consolidating two homes, there are lots of duplicate things that we have. Also, we've been making as much space as possible in the house, so I've been getting rid of stuff left and right. Muffy took a whole carload of toys and such to a church in MA. We've taken a couple of truckloads of stuff to the dump. But I've also done a lot of freecycling, and given new homes to plenty of stuff. Freecycling has been interesting -- some people who want stuff are totally on the ball, make it easy to communicate with 'em, and show up exactly when they say they will.
Some other people are not as responsible, and go so far as to just blow me off, not show up when they say they will, etc.
On Saturday, we had a great experience with someone who was really on the ball.
See, a week or so ago, there was a long wait at the restaurant where we wanted to have dinner, so we put in our names, and then went across the street to a furniture store. An hour later, we were sitting down to dinner, lots of dollars poorer, but with a new king-size TempurPedic on the way. We scheduled delivery for April Fools Day, and they said they'd take the old frame, mattress, and box spring out for free, but I figured I'd offer it to the freecyclers in case anyone wanted it.
Just after I posted, I got a very polite, very heartfelt message from a woman in Providence. Come to find out she was a refugee from Alabama -- refugee, because her brand new house was completely obliterated by hurricane Katrina. While she was in it. She's been sleeping on a cot for the past few weeks, since she got into her new little apartment, and really was anxious at the possibility of a new bed -- a Sealy Posturpedic, which has been covered by a waterproof mattress cover all its life -- and a KING size, at that!
She replied to all my emails in a kind, polite fashion, always timely -- not something freecyclers always do. I explained to her the constraints of the situation...that she'd have to be here the day the bed was going to be delivered, in the morning, after we got up, but before the new bed came. If the old bed was still here when the new bed arrived, I HAD to have the guys take it away. She understood completely. She got a friend with a big Jeep and lots of rope, and they arrived right on time. I had an old, barely used comforter and fitted sheet, both king, too, which I laundered and gave to her as well, so she'd at least have some linens to start with.
I also gave her, since she said she could use them, a saucepan, a sauté pan, and my George Foreman grill (Rich has one, too, and I like his better, and all his Calphalon is moving in soon).
While the guys strapped the mattress to the top of the Jeep, and secured the box springs in the back, she and I chatted a little. She told me of her horror (2 a.m. the hurricane blew in while they were sleeping, first the roof blew off, and since there was no basement foundation, just a slab, the walls fell right in on the house, and on her, and she broke her back -- if the water hadn't risen and lifted some of the debris off of her, she may not have been able to get out at all). She seemed like a very sweet lady, and hated to ask for anything -- she said she didn't want to seem greedy. I told her to let me know if there was anything she really desparately needed, and as we had things to get rid of in the move, I'd give her first dibs. I feel pretty good about the whole thing, frankly.
Oh, and the new bed? AWESOME.
You know, moving things INTO your home is such an exciting experience...A new sofa! Table! Chair!
But moving stuff out is such a HUGE pain.
And when it's finally over, it feels almost as good as getting something new. A guy came today and took the armoire from hell. It probably weighed about three hundred pounds. I got it for free from a girlfriend about ten years ago. She got it from her boyfriend, who had gotten it when he originally got married to his first wife in 1982.
I told the guy it weighed a million pounds, so he got a friend to help him carry it, and they put it in the back of his minivan. The good thing was, Rich and I got energetic this morning, and we actually got it outside before they got here. I think they were pretty pleased about that. :-)
So now the old ktichen table is doing temporary service in the bedroom, holding up the TV. All my socks and underwear are in bags, rather than drawers now...but that's OK. I think I can handle that. It's only temporary. RIGHT? It's ONLY TEMPORARY!
Today was another milestone -- the sofa and futon are gone from downstairs. With much less effort than I'd expected, we got the sofa out of the basement, into the pickup truck, and off to the transfer station. I hate adding 180 pounds of trash to the landfill, but tried to give it away on four different freecycle lists, to no avail. Oh well. It was a great sofa in its lifetime. And it was REALLY fun to hurl the cushions towards the back of the big warehouse thingie where you leave trash!
And the futon is really only partially gone -- the cable guy came to fix a signal problem we were having, and we lost track of time. The transfer station closes at 3...and Rich got there at four minutes to three...and the guy was ALL CLOSED UP. I am quite peeved about this whole thing, and plan to WRITE! A! LETTER! or something. So now we have to wait until Tuesday (not open Sunday or Monday)...which probably means waiting until Saturday. But that's no problem. It's in the pickup now, and is fine to stay there until next weekend.
Tomorrow? The armoire goes to the guy from Freecycle who wanted it, and we tidy up and vacuum that half of the basement, and set up Rich's first desk!