Moved!

We have moved!

We’re not in our new place yet, just our summer place, where we’ve actually been spending our nights for a week now. Our days, though, have been spent at the old place, finishing up the packing. We filled the last box around mid-day yesterday.

Today the movers came and moved everything to our storage unit.

Jackie did great work on the move. She not only did much more than her share of actually packing things into boxes, she also ordered the boxes—and did an incredibly precise job of it. We filled almost 60 book boxes, a similar number of small and medium boxes, somewhat fewer large boxes, and a few specialized boxes (extra-large, electronic equipment, mirror, wardrobe). Jackie figured out how many of each kind to order, and when we were all done we had 3 extra book boxes (one or two of which we will use to pack up the tools that we kept on-hand in case we need any during the cleanup), 1 small and 1 medium box.

I also credit her hard work with saving us money on the move itself, which came in at about $150 below the estimate—mainly because with everything properly packed in advance, the movers were able to just load and unload, without having to fiddle around with stuff that wasn’t quite ready.

Here’s the living room early in the move—piles of boxes, all the shelves empty:

And here’s the living room late in the move:

And here’s the view from near our storage unit:

Tomorrow is my birthday; we’ll take the day off for some celebratory relaxation. The next day we need to go back to the old place and clean it, then schedule a walk-through with the management to make sure there’s no damage. It’s in very good shape, but I’m still mentally warming up to argue that “normal wear and tear” for a unit we’ve been living in for 14 years is more than might be expected after a 1-year rental. Hopefully it won’t be necessary.

After that, we’re pretty much on vacation for the rest of the summer! I’ll be able to focus on my writing. Jackie will be able to focus on her spinning. (Not her weaving, as the loom is packed. Also not the knitting—she’d intended to have some knitting yarn, but used so much as packing material to go around fragile items, she ended up going ahead and packing the knitting needles as well.)

There’s a bunch of cultural stuff in Champaign in the summer that we hope to do, including Friday Night Live every week, and the annual Blues, Brews, and BBQs, not to mention the Taste of Champaign. It’ll be really handy to be so close to downtown for all that.

We can spend June and July enjoying all that, before we have to start worrying about where we’ll live in the fall. Hopefully, Winfield Village will get us a move-in date in good time, but if they don’t, we have lots of options, from visiting relatives to just renting a regular apartment, to taking an extended camping trip. (We made sure to bring our camping gear to our summer place, rather than packing it up.)