The Severed Cortex

We have way too much crap. How did we acquire so much crap? Don't ask me. I have no idea.

In most cases people who move call a full service moving company to pack, load, move, and unload their collection of poop. We didn't have that luxury. What we had was a tentative contract with suspect buyers. We had to plan for every conceivable possibility which basically consisted of we are moving or we aren't moving. Unfortunately we had to lean towards the former but in order to cover our ass we had to plan that we were actually moving. The bad part was that if we didn't wind up moving we didn't want all our stuff packed up somewhere. Oh, and by the way, we closed on the Monday the 29th but the Christmas holidays fell right before that. Enter the world of PODS, or portable on demand storage. I wish I had invented it.

Our plan was this: pack the non-essentials in PODS. If the house didn't sell at least we had some of our stuff packed up. Not enough to make it suck for living in the house, but enough to get the stuff we didn't need all the time out of the way. On the 18th they delivered an empty POD to our house. By the evening of the 21st we had it packed to the gills. It was a slow start for me packing it, but after awhile I figured out how to maximize the space. By the time I closed the door on that first POD I had used damn near every square inch of the thing. All that was left in the house were the big heavy items and the essential things.

On the 22nd the POD people picked up the filled POD and dropped an empty one in its place. By this time we knew that the house was sold. Granted, I didn't know this at the time we ordered the next POD but we had to assume that everything was a go. How planned was I? I had movers set up to move the big stuff on the 23rd. And on the morning of the 23rd, despite the sleet, snow and slick roads, the movers showed up ready to go a mere 5 minutes late. Their coordinator called me ahead of time to alert me they would be a little late. (Hats off to Sims Awesome Moving Company) They took one look around at our stuff and made this simple declaration. "All that ain't gonna fit in one POD". Seriously? Seriously. We had to improvise our plan quickly and this was it; move all the really heavy stuff into the POD and get everything else in the garage. As the movers did their thing, I called PODS. They assured me that even though they planned on picking up the current POD on the 27th, they could instead pick it up on the 26th, deliver another one, and pick up that one on the 27th. I was ecstatic. Nevermind that I had to pack that next POD in one day with stuff too heavy for me to move on my own. I'd figure that part out. All was not happy in Mudville though. On the 26th PODS called me to tell me not only could they not deliver me another POD, they couldn't pick up the current one until the 30th. No can do chief, I told them. I don't own the house on that day. Several hours later they called to tell me that they could pick up the current one on the 27th but they couldn't bring me another empty.

Enter U-Haul. Say what you want about U-Haul but you'll never hear me disparage them. I ordered a 17 foot truck but they didn't have one available. Instead, they gave me a 26 foot truck at the 17 foot price. When I went to pick it up in East Alton, I told the store manager that I needed it for 4 days. He gave me the truck for the extra days at no extra cost. Truthfully I think he just wanted that big truck off his small lot, but either way he cut me a deal. Turned out that the rest of our stuff barely fit on the 26 foot truck, but I did manage to get it all in there.

We have way too much crap.