Boxes, Boxes, and More Boxes
Journey to a "New" Home (Part 4)
Part 1: Where Should I Start?
Part 2: Pipe Leak, Sitting Water, and Mold, Oh My!
Part 3: Swabs, Samples, and a 217-Page Report
With the mold remediation completed, we moved onto mold remediation. We had quick initial calls with two mold remediation companies. We decided on one, and there was a longer follow-up call. We went over ALL. THE. THINGS. (but yet, it wasn’t enough, and I’ll share more about this later). Since we did not have any noticeable health issues connected to the mold (that we know of), we did not rush to make an appointment for the remediation. It was, however, determined that it would be a good idea to empty out the whole house since all rooms were affected to some degree. And even if not all the rooms were affected, with all the demolition, it was ideal for things to be moved so we do not end up with messed up items from any debris floating around. It was clear that we would need a fresh start in many sense of the word.
We chose an available date in November to start. It was August at this time, so three months seemed like a reasonable amount of time to pack up an entire house that we have lived in for 17.5 years and decide what to do with all the furniture. Or maybe it was not really reasonable, but having a deadline got us to take action. I’m so thankful for my decluttering group who saw me through each day’s check-ins and check-outs.
The first order of business was to find containers. I think there was a sale of plastic storage boxes (plus cashback…always use Rakuten or other similar cashback sites when shopping online (with store pick-up).
I started making all the lists of all the things. Before packing by rooms and by areas/items, I had us pack our own individual possessions. Although our house is not that big, we did have stuff in various places in the house. We all had stuff in our own rooms and in the office. The husband and I had sentimental and keepsake items in the girls’ closet because they had the biggest closet by far, so half of the closet was storage. And some of us had stuff in the living areas. So, we did most of the visible items to start with, and soon enough, the boxes were all filled. (It was actually really helpful to limit ourselves to one box each and get rid of what did not fit. We could finally “see” how much we each had.)
Under other circumstances, I would go to the buy/sell group I host or our Buy Nothing group to ask if anyone had any boxes, but because we had that deadline, we went ahead and bought some boxes. We also got quite a few boxes from my younger sister because she recently moved, but she gave most of her boxes to friends who moved after them. When it got closer to move-out day, we also bought moving bags for clothes.
My process was to pack things from each area, decluttering as I went, take a picture of the items on top once it was full, and then label the box with a sticky note with the room, a number, and the main items that were inside. The photos went into Google Photos album, and the information went to our ever-growing Gsheet of tabs for this project. Then, I would sort the decluttered item to be posted in various groups to be given away or to put out in our driveaway in the “freebie” boxes. It became quite a thing to see what was taken, how quickly they were taken, and also how they were taken each day.
Here are some interesting driveway stories:
A guy on a bike picked up the 9-cube organizer and somehow hauled it on his back…sadly, our cameras did not record the potential hilarity of him leaving with it, just him approaching it and picking it up.
A neighbor a few houses down, arriving home for the day, drove up to our house instead of parking in front of his own house, got out, carried a small bookcase to his house down the block, and then walked back to get his car.
This was also not recorded, but I saw enough in the playback to see that one of our mail carriers took half the stuff out front one day…it was a day we put many items out. It was quite odd to see a mail carrier on Sunday, and I also did not recognize him…we have one regular guy and a rotation of three others…
Another mail carrier asked if he could have a coat hook rack and another item.
One lady was driving from the direction of where the stuff in the driveaway was so she could not see it from behind the fence, but she still somehow saw it so quickly that she stopped very suddenly and grabbed our big hamper plus the two matching trash cans that went with it. She was so fast.
Our next-door neighbor was having a party one day, and some of their guests came to look at the items. One of the ladies had kids, and they thoroughly went through everything, and I’m so glad they took lots of books and some toys.
I also posted in a private photo album for friends to go through before posting in the buy/sell and Buy Nothing group. We had so many books, random stuff, and lots of school and office supplies. Thanks to all the friends who took all of our stuff. So glad everything will be used! (We still will have more books to give away when we unpack too! Being out of our home for four months now, we can see how we can do without so many things in our lives.)
Okay, back to the packing…after packing up most of the stuff in closets and stuff we did not use often, it was rather slow-going. Because we would still be in the house for another three months, there were many things we needed to use and could not pack yet.
In addition to packing, we had to decide where things would go. We did all the research on the nearby storage places. We found the most economical one for us, but we did not know what size we would need. I had a list of everything that would need to be stored but could not picture how it would fit and the dimension of the stuff if it were stacked. In the end, we decided to just get rid of most of our furniture. We got almost everything secondhand from my buy/sell group anyway. It did not seem like a loss since we got Ikea desks, bookcases, and shelves for $5-10.
My thoughts and words are a bit jumbled since it has been a while since I have thought about those packing days and every day just seemed overwhelming. We planned out which boxes to move where and when. We planned out what items went to which bulky pickups. We planned out which items to bring to the hazardous waste place. A big thanks to our bulky pickup hosts - the Medina fam, my BIL, and my parents, (we also had a bulky pickup at our house), as well as our friends with trucks to helped move the items (in the rain!) - the Yi fam and the Johanson fam, and my brother who helped move so much stuff that last week. A big thanks also to my sister who is storing more than a dozen boxes, my MIL who is storing HALF of our house 😝, and my parents who are storing a half-dozen boxes, a whole downstairs closet full of our clothes, all our office chairs(!!), instruments, and so much more.
We were down to the wire, and we were so conflicted as to what to do with M’s bed. The box spring was not new but decent. The mattress was only 3ish years old and the most comfortable thing ever, but we did not need it anymore. I did not have any time to try to sell it, wait for a taker, and arrange for a pick-up. I thought I would find someone in my buy/sell group to take it, but crickets. So, I posted on my personal Facebook feed, and a friend was able to come the next day to get it! It was also good to catch-up a bit too. She commiserated with a story about their house issues in the recent past.
Then, just like that, it was time for us to move to the hotel…
Part 5: Hotel life (coming soon)
(There are a lot of “side stories” to all the packing…if you know us in real-life, you can ask us about it.)