It's U-Box Time Again

Last week was very busy as the time came to pack and send the U-Haul U-Box for the moving sale. On Monday, I scheduled the move for Thursday as that would make the estimated arrival date Saturday June 8. That way if the box is late it can arrive on Monday, just in time for the moving sale setup. It was a whole lot of work and overall I feel good about it. I would say about 95% of what I wanted to send made it into the box. The rest was just because I ran out of time as I packed everything myself. I was still packing as the movers were loading. At the end I was dealing with bins which had no lids, they must be at home. Once again, I was not able to get any of the extra salad / pasta bowls home. This was the third time this plan was foiled. As far as kitchen items, I was more focused on getting all of the china sets in the box, including one we bought here early on which I will put up in my china cabinet for display. At this point I think I will give up on the idea and just buy some bowls when I get home. It is not the end of the world that we have 24 bowls here. The movers this time were the best, they did a great job loading the U-Box and I feel confident that everything will arrive in one piece. I have saved their information for the future but hopefully this will be the last move for a long time. I only saved two large grey bins, one for my Christmas tree and one for my ceramic Christmas trees. All of the other grey bins are gone! Packing another U-Box was a crazy thing to do but for my own sanity it needed to be done. There are lots of great items that we never had time to sell that will enhance the moving sale.

All of the extra items are out of the garage and on their way to Arlington Heights and as I predicted, it is a great feeling. I still have a small bit of rearranging to do but the car easily fits in the garage now. It basically has not been in all year between preparing for the garage sale in February and not taking the display down because I kept having jewelry visitors. The timing is important because high temperatures are averaging 100 degrees every day and will start to trend even higher the two weeks leading up to our departure. Because the garage is slightly below grade, it keeps the car a good 10 to 15 degrees cooler than leaving it outside. It is much more pleasant when having to go somewhere!

I also spent some time moving more of Mother's items to the apartment. There is a large pine bookshelf in the first floor bedroom which has lots of items displayed in it, including pottery, basketry, decorative books, cookbooks and more. Mother just needs to make her final decisions on what to keep but she is very quickly running out of space. I was able to get my closet and dresser drawer items moved to the first floor bedroom but I am not sleeping in there yet. Even though there is no furniture in there except for a queen size mattress on a metal frame, wrought iron side tables I brought in from the patio, a lingerie chest and the pine bookshelf, it has always been Mother's room and still feels that way. I need a covering for the window to block out the light in the mornings but I think I sent all of the curtain panels we had back home to sell. I am not in the market to buy anything since one day I would like to redecorate so I will make do with what I have. I did have the closet professionally organized so there is lots of hanging space, drawers and shelves and there is a dresser just adjacent in the seating area so there is enough room for all of my belongings. The next step will be to move Kuochun's clothing to half the closet in my room and use the other half of the closet to hang clothing I plan to sell online. Both upstairs bedrooms are rectangular in shape but my room is a foot wider. Kuochun's queen size bed will fit better in there and for now my full size bed can go in his room. I have some simple plans which were drawn up by the ex-interior designer which have the full size bed oriented as a daybed. I am not sure if we will get to the full move before we go but I know this is something Kuochun and I can handle as I am going to leave the area rugs in place and just switch out the furniture. All we need are some flat furniture movers. Because the wall in Kuochun's room is partially open he has a TV on a rolling stand which does the job but looks terrible. I will move that TV downstairs and I should be able to store it in the first floor bedroom and roll it out to the desk area when I would like to have the TV on while working on jewelry.

There was a lot of estate sale work to do this week, I originally thought I would try and do a jewelry purge after all but was not able to get to it. I believe I have enough Native American jewelry remaining for two purges so I will plan to shoot all of the photos here, post one next Sunday and save the other one for the following Sunday if I am up to it. If the photos are done I should be able to. We are coming back in the overnight hours Sunday and we will be losing two hours as Arizona does not participate in Daylight Savings. I decided to get the jewelry purge from last time off my desk and started posting the May 19 purge online. Everything is up except for the earrings, they will be posted next week. The owl watch tips ended up selling on eBay two days after I listed them but I have another set with a solid background which will be going up for sale soon.

Kuochun really wanted to go back to Chicago Hamburger Co. on Wednesday as this is one of their brat days. The brats were the real deal, definitely cooked in beer but they put them on the poppy seed buns that are for the hot dogs. That was a little weird but would not prevent us from getting them again.

Next up is to continue to work through the boxes of jewelry I have here. I am determined to catch up with polishing and pricing the sterling this summer so I can work on the costume jewelry when I return in the fall. I should have a bit of a break from doctor's appointments which is good because I want to help Mother finish organizing her apartment before I go. We also need to go through all of her jewelry so she can decide what she would like to sell in the moving sale. Despite all of the recent changes overall I feel like the state of organization is in better shape now than it was this time last year. It definitely helps not having a third person in the house to clean up after. The only missing piece is someone to help Mother with tasks which need to be done in person. She has the scooter so she can take a ride down and pick up her mail, packages and any food deliveries. Home nursing care and physical therapy will start next week, they will each visit once per week. So far, we have been able to schedule televisits with doctors. I am crossing my fingers that things will be OK.

The person I have had keep an eye on the home while we are not here these past two years never responded to me when I reached out asking if she would like to help out again. I never got angry to her face but I was super upset when she locked us out of the house when we came here last fall. We were stuck outside for hours in the dark and had to pay nearly $200 for a locksmith and this was not the only screwup last year. But I did have an alternative idea - a great husband and wife team does the yard maintenance every other week. Kuochun and I are going to ask if they could just pop inside the house when they are working on the yard to make sure the air conditioner did not break down, there are no water leaks etc. and I will pay them extra. Since they have been doing the yard maintenance and keeping the outdoor drain clear of debris I have not had any issues with flooding. This is not nearly as often as the other person checked on things but hopefully this will be sufficient. Since they are there already the cost could be kept to a minimum. Melinda also plans to visit Mother once a month and she can check on the house at that time as well. I will need to be very careful not to have anything delivered here by mistake as it could be sitting outside or in the front entry in the extreme heat for up to two weeks. The mail slot is in the garage door so the mail will drop into the garage. We will forward our mail as well.

Everything is going smoothly with the real estate transaction for Mother's home but it has proven to be extra work. When I purchased the Scottsdale home, a notary was sent to Mount Prospect as I was not present for the transaction. However this time I had to handle everything. Kuochun had the good idea to have the documents notarized at a Chase Bank where both he and Mother have accounts. There was no way Mother could stand at the window at a currency exchange to sign all the documents. All went well at the bank, we followed the instructions correctly on the first try and then I was able to FedEx the originals over to the attorney. Hopefully this will be all I need to do for the real estate. We still need to cancel the landscaping service and utilities. It is still extremely sad that the home will be gone but it will be one less thing to worry about.

 Until next time!