Go!

The move has officially begun. Saturday we started packing things up in earnest. Our initial objective is to empty the current house of all items not wanted onsite for showings. Even though the new house is going to be a construction zone for a while we still want to get going on listing ours to hopefully attract some spring fever buyers. We may end up selling it before we're really ready to move, but will cross that bridge then if it happens.

In order to get things out of the house we rented a storage unit nearby. What a hassle that was. The last time I rented a storage unit was back in the band days. One of the bands I was in kept some of our staging gear in one for a while. I think it cost either $19 or $29 per month for a 10' x 20' unit. I showed up at the site and within 10 minutes had the unit rented. Things have changed...

We rented a 10' x 20' for well over $100 per month, which is what it is. What amazed me was the ordeal of getting it all going. After calling the number to set it all up we learned (toward the end of the call) that we were just talking to a national call center for the parent company, not the local owner/manger of the unit in question. So....they had to have the manager call us back to firm up the details. Both of these calls took WAY longer than seemed necessary and covered a lot more detail than we expected or were comfortable with. Nevertheless we pressed on and loaded up the SUV with stuff to take over there. When we arrived we learned that there was a pile of paperwork to do, including a contract that was eight pages long...for a 10 x 20 shed... (I swear I am not making this up). Then, the coup de grâce....they wanted fingerprints! Wow. I fought the urge to just walk out and say, "forget it." Again we pressed on. We were burning daylight and just wanted to get something we thought would take all of 10 minutes completed and checked off the list. Very weirdly unsettling experience. I realize they must deal with a variety of questionable types (the terrorists win again in making our lives worse), but the overriding vibe of circumspection on their part does not make the customer feel good. I can't imagine ever renting a unit there again.

Anyway...over the course of the weekend we made 10 or 12 trips. Sadly Liane's SUV is so small it's going to take a lot more trips to get it done, and that doesn't even count the furniture that has to go, which will have to be transported some other way.

In the midst of making these trips the realization hit me that, at the rate we are going, we'll probably have possession of the new house before the first showing of ours....thereby making the whole storage unit a nearly complete waste of time and energy.

Ahhh yes, moving is such fun...