Packing the storage unit

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Roger rented our storage unit on Tuesday and bought a lock. Wednesday we took our first load down – mostly boxes of books. These we stacked against the side wall, leaving the back wall for furniture, into which we intend to stash many of the books. While I was at my final French lesson, having éclairs and French wine, Roger started to move some of the smaller items down from upstairs, mainly the twin mattresses and box springs and two night stands. Thursday we emptied out some of the bookcases downstairs and moved the rest of the furniture from upstairs into the living room. This is when I suffered my first injury. Roger had to remove the railing from the upstairs hall in order for us to get the queen-sized mattress and box springs down (this is how we got them up there!). He handed down the queen headboard, and I wasn’t able to hold it. It dropped the last foot or so, barking both my shins rather badly and causing one to bleed, although not badly. I cursed and hopped around a bit, but within 5 minutes was ready to help ease the mattress and box springs down. Two big bumps with bruises.

Friday was our work day. Roger had called U-Haul to rent their 10-foot truck, but was told that the smallest they have is 14 feet. They were, however, willing to rent it to us for the same $19.95 as the 10-footer. He reserved it for Friday at 9:00. That morning I dropped him off at the rental center and came back to get things ready. Before he got home, Anna from the rental center called to say he had left his credit card there and he could pick it up when he returned the truck. He arrived shortly thereafter and backed into the driveway. (As we were preparing to leave an hour later, he discovered that he had backed the truck too close to the basketball goal and it was wedged against the truck. He was able to drive out without much additional damage either to the goal or the truck.)

We loaded on the mattresses, most of the furniture from upstairs, and a couple of bookcases. We had had the truck for an hour by this time, so decided to head for the storage unit. I went inside to lock the house and shut the overhead garage door, and as I exited the house, he was driving off! I guess he didn’t want my help unloading, huh? So I drove the car down there – a totally superfluous trip, as I could have ridden with him in the truck. Oh, well. We unloaded the stuff mostly without incident – well, one minor incident. The storage center has carts available for our use. I ran one of those into my already-bruised shin, setting it to bleeding again. We returned to the house for a second, smaller load consisting of three more bookcases and the drawers to a couple of the bureaus from upstairs. We were beginning to be exhausted by this time. We off-loaded the second load at the storage unit and Roger returned the truck. I stopped into the storage unit office to reserve the storage unit truck for next Saturday, chatted with the rental unit guy for a few moments, then took the car and headed home. I got almost all the way there and thought to myself that Roger should be along shortly, it shouldn’t take him too long to gas up the truck and drop it off. Then it occurred to me that the only way he could get home was for me to pick him up. Oops! So I went back to the rental center. I could have covered my ass completely, as he wasn’t through checking out yet, but I did admit that I had forgotten about him.

We went home and had a late lunch – it was around 1:00 by this time. We read and fiddled around on-line, and I found myself so tired I could barely keep my eyes open. At 3:00, I declared nap time and we fell onto the bed, exhausted. Roger slept until 4:00, I until 4:30. Good call. When bedtime rolled around, we still were really tired, but not as fatigued as we would have been otherwise. Besides, Roger has chess on Friday nights and he needed to be alert for that. He said he and Dudley split the games pretty evenly, and says that Dudley intends to spend the week studying up so he can shut Roger out next week, since that will be the last time they play.

This morning we spent two 30-minute sessions in the garage, trying to bring some semblance of order to it. It is already 80° when we get up in the mornings, so we work in the garage early, and take breaks often. Around 10:30 we loaded up the car with smaller stuff, including several drawers for some of the bureaus, and went to the storage unit for an hour or so of re-organization of the unit. When we left it yesterday, it appeared rather full already because we just dropped stuff off without any attempt at organization. We carried some bureau drawers to the unit, then began organizing, placing the first four pieces of furniture against the back wall. We noted that there were two or three empty drawers which we did not want to leave that way, so we planned to leave those accessible and work elsewhere. There was also one bureau drawer missing which needed to be placed early, so we planned to bring that the next time we come. Not long after we got started, Roger took a decorative 1x4 piece of wood and placed it between a couple of boxes, whereupon it fell and struck me on the head. When I put my hand to my head and found blood on it, I told Roger I felt the need to go home and deal with the issue. When he asked me if I was going to go by myself, I told him I wasn’t sure I would make it without passing out, so we headed home. So much for the morning’s reorganization! I guess I will be washing my hair this evening, huh?

At home, I cleaned my wound somewhat, and sulked a bit. We had lunch and sat around until about 2:00, when we loaded the missing bureau drawer into the car along with a couple of boxes of stuff to put into the empty drawers. We got in a good hour of organizing this time, and I am really pleased with how things went. We worked to make sure every drawer and space was filled, mostly with boxes, then put a second row of furniture in front of the row we had placed this morning. We filled every space with more boxes and tubs, then put a box spring and two mattresses across the back on top of all that stuff, almost to the ceiling. There is room to put three more twin mattresses/box springs perpendicular to the three we already placed, but we need to put in another bookcase or stack of boxes/tubs to support them, which we will do early next week.

We left feeling very good about the efficient use of the storage space. Roger estimates that we used about ¼ of the space in the unit so far. We are both pretty optimistic at this point that we have more than ¼ of our household goods in. The big question now is going to be: how much of our outside stuff can we get in? There are six Rubbermaid storage units in the garage, four of which are five feet tall, two of which are about half that. These are light, and can probably be lifted on top of some other stuff in the unit. But then there is all of the lawn care stuff – how much of that is going to fit? We certainly can’t lift a lawn mower on top of much of anything, although perhaps we could put it on top of the washer. How much do we want to keep?

I have discovered in this process of packing for our Grand Adventure that I am not particularly attached to any of our furniture. It is very easy to say “If we can’t get this in, I don’t mind leaving it behind.” I really feel that way about most of our furniture. I have said that about the love seat, a bookcase which was really nice until Alexis scratched it up one day when she decided to sharpen her claws on it, the entertainment center. I feel that way about much of the rest of the stuff. Almost all of it is 25-29 years old and, while still functional, is starting to show its age. By the time we get this stuff into storage, then out in a year, hauled to Texas, and unloaded at our new house in our third life, it will all be in considerably worse shape. We are not the most careful of movers, and much of it is getting scuffed up. Sometimes I think that if I hear “Oops!” one more time, I will scream! The main reason we want to keep the stuff is that we don’t want to have to spend money replacing the things when we get to our third life. I do have to admit that I love our dining room chairs, however. They are on rollers and are quite sturdy. I love being able to roll around in them. They could do with reupholstering, but they are some of the last things I would want to part with.

Still no nibbles on the house. There is an open house tomorrow from 2:30 – 4:00. Pam and Ronald, bless their hearts, are giving us a little party in Slidell tomorrow evening, so we may just leave early for that.