Moving is always hard. There’s lots to figure out. Boxes to gather, organize, fill and label. My suggestion, having just gone through the process, is to pick a time to move that is not butt hot. We somehow managed to pick the absolutely hottest part of the Summer to do the most of our work. Piles of things everywhere you look can be overwhelming in any type of weather. The heat just made it a little too much. Our wonderful apartment had never been so hot. It was really terrible. We did everything we could to cool the place down at night and then shut out the heat during the day. It just never got that cool at night. Misery. That is the word I would use to describe it.
I think we were pretty smart in our packing though. We had a good system. We had boxes that we packed and labeled and wrote “storage” clearly on. These were boxes that we would hide away when we made the move to San Diego. No need to get anything out of those boxes during our time in San Diego. Another set of boxes was clearly labeled as being stuff we wanted out in San Diego. Another collection of boxes and trash bags was for donations and the last category was garage sale.Yes. We sold A TON of stuff. We had a two day garage sale (Friday and Saturday) our last weekend in town. We made (including a small bit of business on Craigslist) just over $1,000. Crazy, right? Who makes that kind of money at a garage sale? I guess that when you’re moving into a smaller place and also have dreams of traveling dancing through your mind you find the ability to part ways with items you had previously held onto with an iron grip despite the fact that they NEVER got any use.
Our garage sale was actually a lot of fun. I met a couple teachers of youngsters and chatted with them and ended up giving them a ton of stuff. I know how teaching goes. You make very little and the little you make you spend on stuff to enhance your program and create fun learning experiences. How could I not make them take everything they could possibly want?
Blake was able to bless some of our customers with his passion, too. We were selling a couple bike wheels and that led to many conversations about biking. A couple exchange students from Korea actually went back to their place and brought back a bike so Blake could help them fix a couple problems. While he was doing this a middle aged woman got excited and asked if he would help her with a bike problem, too. She returned the next day with her bike. I like having a husband so willing to use his knowledge to help others.
We unloaded a ton and donated everything that didn’t sell. Threw away a bunch. Put curb alerts on Craigslist. Boy is it freeing. We cut our possessions by at least a third and put away a good portion of money towards our 2013 adventures. Not bad. Not bad at all.
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| Treats and a card our last day at TJs |
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| Last day at TJs together... Blake made us match (ok, maybe it was me) |
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| Moving day... Thank goodness for amazing friends! I can't believe how quickly we did that! |
After several trips back and forth (including a large U-Haul trailer) we got everything to San Diego and said our goodbyes to Long Beach, our first home together.
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| Our amazing kitchen. Farewell, I will miss all of those counters. |
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| Loved this place. |
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| Keys ready to turn in (I kept one! Shhh!) |
We made it to San Diego and have pretty much unpacked and started settling in. Of course, the heat didn't end with the packing side of things. We made to La Mesa in time for record breaking temperatures... One day actually reached 106 degrees! What the heck. Oh well. We did it.
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| New home, sweet, home. |
Now we can comfortably work and save for our travels! Thanks in-laws for letting us crash with you! You've got all sorts of postcards in your future!
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