Getting Ready to Store

We made today another good day. It definitely feels like we've left the "overwhelm" behind us. Boris says "we're out in front of it". And, I agree! There's bound to be another wave or two of emotion out there somewhere. But, for now, we have things well in hand. 

It just so happens that the seams in our garage floor create 7 x 7 ft. squares. How convenient! We've stacked most of our boxes in one of the squares, and so far so good. It looks like it should all fit. Our fingers are definitely crossed. 

Fellow future fulltimers Tom and Marci posed the question of what we're planning on packing in our POD. And, how we chose to go the POD route in the first place. Good questions! 

Although we have no idea how long we'll be fulltimers, we are planning to come off the road sometime. Be it in six months, or six years, we will find ourselves back in a stick and brick house one day. When that day comes, we don't exactly want to start over from scratch. We just might want to have some stuff. But, what do we know? 

With no family around for a couple thousand miles, we don't have a place nearby to "park" any of our possessions. Plus, we have no plans to land anywhere near here. Besides, there's nothing about Northern California that is central. Whatever we store needs to be moved. We decided we'd move our stuff to the middle of the country. That way, it's close to family, located in a place we plan to pass through several times while we're on the road, and a heck of a lot closer to any place we might eventually settle.

About a year ago, we started thinking about our criteria for what we would be willing to move and store for the duration of our fulltiming adventures. China, crystal, art, photos and quilts were the Big Five. Why? I'm not sure. But, they were. So, we went with it. Then, we added the mixer and my stash to the list. We own one piece of new furniture, which we looked far and wide for. It's small and we love it. So, it's the one piece of furniture we're planning to keep.  We each have a few files from our work lives that we want to hang on to. (I confess! I have several more than Boris.) We decided to keep a very few books. (How we chose which were keepers I really can't remember.) We also have a few mementos and heirloom type things that we just plain decided we'd keep.  And, we're going to pack a wardrobe box with a few things, mostly so we have dress clothes close to our family's homes should we need them for weddings and funerals. We've packed one small box that has Bullwinkle's factory-issued bedding inside. It's labeled "Load Last" so it'll be within easy reach when and if we trade for a new moose. Oh, yeah. I almost forgot. We're taking our mattress and box springs, if they fit. If not, they'll be on the last charity load.

Now, that it's just about all packed up, it's more than we thought it would be. But, it is a small fraction of what we had.

Since we're moving and storing, we looked into the different options that were available. We found a handful of companies that do the "we'll bring a container to you, you load it, we'll pick it up and deliver it" thing. Originally, we thought we'd load our container and fly to Kansas City, rent a truck, unload the container and move it to a self storage. (Yeah, it didn't take us too long to figure out that was way too much work.) When we talked to the PODS people, they had a solution that really worked for us: they'd deliver a POD, we'd load it, they'd move it to their climate-controlled warehouse in Kansas City and there it would sit until we called them to deliver it to our sticks and bricks. And, the price was right. 

There are three handy sizes of PODS: small, medium and large. Based on the amount of stuff that met our storage criteria, we were thinking about going with the medium. But, we very recently discovered that the container that is the perfect size for us is not used for long distance moves. Curses! So, rather than paying for space we couldn't possibly fill, we decided to downsize. Where we once thought we'd have plenty of space, now we have our fingers crossed that it'll all fit.

If we were to approach all this purely from an economic perspective, we wouldn't move or store a thing. We'd ship a couple of boxes of family heirlooms to family members and call it done. For what we'll pay in moving and years of storage, we could probably replace everything in that container with funds to spare. We're letting our hearts guide us on this one. One day, we'll have that container delivered to our new house. Sure, we'll open some boxes and think "we can't believe we packed this worthless stuff". But, we'll open others and say, "we're so glad we kept this all these years." 

That'll be priceless!