One interesting aspect of moving is the realization that your possessions are simply that: possessions. We made the decision early on not to move most of our furniture, simply due to the condition the items are in. If you can sell your couch for $50 but it costs $100 to move, it simply doesn’t make financial sense to do it. There are a few pieces that we are moving, mainly due to sentimental reasons: a hand-painted stool given as an anniversary present, the kitchen table that has been in the family for decades, and of course our computers that are too expensive to replace.
Today we had our Freecycle “garage cleaning out” event, and we were able to dispose of about 60% of what was out there. It’s not a bad result, and only required an hour of our time. Our goal is to get rid of all unwanted items, so that Nick doesn’t need to deal with it on his moving day. We have the items up under the “free” section of Craigslist, and we’ve already had a couple of bites on our TV armoire, so we’re hopeful that we will be able to give it away. Our city does not have a bulky pick-up, so any unwanted items needs to be brought to the drop-off site. Nick is renting a U-Haul truck for July 21st to clear out his bedroom and take our mattress set to his apartment, and the back-up plan is that he will remove any of our unwanted furniture for us, by bringing it to the disposal site.
We needed to buy more packing tape, so we went to Wal-Mart afterwards, where we made an interesting discovery: they sell boxes, and at about half the price U-Haul charges. We picked up a few, but I anticipate we’ll be needing to go back and get some more. We’re nearing the end of our packing, and we don’t mind paying for a few to get the job done. A word to the wise: you will need way more boxes than you anticipate; start collecting them early. We have needed to pack our boxes more securely than if we were just moving across town; which requires the use of more boxes, tape, and paper than we have utilized in the past. Currently we have 206 boxes packed; which seems like a lot but realize some of these boxes are smaller boxes that Nick was able to bring home from the restaurant: free is free after all! We don’t even want to consider how many boxes we would have needed if we had kept all our belongings: we estimate that we have disposed of approximately sixty percent of our possessions. Only pack what you truly treasure, as it will save you time and money in the long run. ♥
One of the biggest challenges we are facing right now is not packing up the boxes, but finding the best way to dispose of our unwanted furniture and other assorted items. As you know, we opted not to go the garage sale route, but are using Freecycle and Craigslist, which have their limitations.
Our furniture is not in the best shape, which is why are opting not to sell it (or move it). The difficulty we are encountering with Freecycle is that people initially show an interest, but then fail to respond to the email or fail to show up. This weekend we are opening our garage up and letting people come and just take what they want, and we’re hoping they will take it all!
Our Craigslist sales have been slow but steady, and we’re very curious as to how much we’ve been able to save using this method. We think we will break open the piggy on July 20th, as he (the piggy) will get packed. If you are choosing to sell your items in this way, we recommend starting at least three to four months in advance of your move. We’ve been able to sell pretty much everything we’ve put on there, but it involves having the right person see it at the right time, which means you’ll need to repost the ad regularly. Craigslist recently did an update, which allows you to renew your posting, instead of deleting it and relisting it; this is definitely a time saver.
Please follow us on Twitter @FondyMark and @jvitek, as we continue to tweet about our progress! Thanks for following us along; like Tiana sings: “We’re almost there!”
A part of any successful dream involves looking ahead and anticipating possible obstacles that may impede you from attaining your goal. If you’ve followed our personal accounts on Facebook today, you know that our car repairs will be $400; due in part to the age of our car, it requires a part that has to be ordered directly from the manufacturer. To say we’re a little frustrated is an understatement. However, we are extremely thankful this didn’t happen two weeks from now, or while en route to Florida. It could have been much worse.
Due to this happening, we thought back to the past twelve months and how our move has really unfolded. If you have told us last year at this time, that we would be moving to Florida in July 2011, we would have laughed at you. 2010 was not a good year for us, to say the least; we still had the dream with a date set for 2012, but due to circumstances occurring around us, we weren’t too hopeful we could achieve this move in two years. The thing is, the events that happened in 2010 needed to happen before we could make the move to Florida. If you are in a position now where you can’t possibly believe that you can ever achieve your dream, take heart. Go with the flow, keep dreaming the dream, and know that you can do it. We at Wishes And Pixie Dust believe in you, and we will cheer you on.
It seems wild to us to think we only have sixteen days left in Wisconsin. When we made our decision back in January to move , it certainly was an easy one to make, given the blowing snow and bitterly cold temperatures, and of course our love for Disney. In the past six months we have overcome obstacles; we share this bit of information because we want to let you know that it is impossible to plan a move across several states without hitting at least one or two roadblocks along the way. Things will not always go as you plan, you will have bad days and moments of “why did I ever decide to do this?” pop into your head. We’re here to let you know it’s okay, keep moving forward with your dream, and deal with the obstacles as they occur.
One such obstacle is our car. We brought it in to the shop in March for $700 worth of repairs, $900 in June, and yes, we are bringing it in again in July (tomorrow). As we mentioned earlier, the check engine light came on and while that didn’t necessarily alarm us too much, the large puddle of coolant on our garage floor that leaked after we drove around for a couple of hours did. We are hoping it’s nothing serious, and we would appreciate prayers on this issue, because we really don’t want to pour more money into repairs, as this is money that is not buying furniture for us when we move.
One of the things we are most looking forward to once we are in Clermont and inside our apartment, is to just enjoy the moment, knowing there are no boxes to pack, no rooms to clean, no furniture to unload, and nothing to do except realize that we did it. That is the moment that we hold on to now, that helps us to get us through these next two weeks, whatever they may bring.
When we started our blog, it was mainly for our own purposes, to keep track of different aspects of our move. We feel honored that so many of our readers follow us regularly, and some readers aspire to follow in our footsteps and make their own journey to Florida to be closer to the Mouse. 🙂 In response to that, we attempt to post regularly, and to provide more informational blog posts that may help you with some of the major decision making that goes into a multi-state move. There are times that we share a blog post, and think “Really? No one is going to want to read that, it’s boring!”, and then we receive a few comments that encourage us that yes, you really want to hear about it! Today we wanted to share with you what our day looks like three weeks before our move, to give you a feel of perhaps what to expect when you experience your relocation.
Saturday is typically a very routine day in the Vitek household. We always begin with a trip to the library to return and check out different materials. We are very heavy users of the public library, it’s not very often we miss a visit, and we intend to keep up the routine once we make the move. We have two libraries in which to choose from in Clermont: Cooper Memorial and Cagan Crossings: we will most likely select Cooper Memorial as the library we most often frequent as it is closer to us than Cagan Crossings. Library cards must be applied for online, so we will do that the week of our move, so that they will be ready for us the following Saturday.
After the library we came home for lunch, and waited for a Craigslist exchange, twenty more dollars earned for our piggy! We then went to our oldest son’s apartment again, then off to Festival Foods to do some grocery shopping. We’ve been researching grocery stores in the Clermont area, and we do believe Publix will probably end up being our store of choice, although we’ve heard some good things about Sweetbay, so we may check that out as well. We pulled up the advertisement on the internet and the prices are quite comparable with what we are currently paying in Wisconsin.
We came home and unloaded our groceries, and went through the kitchen cabinets to see what else we could offer to Nick, and it ended up being quite a nice pile. He will get more once we are down to our last couple of days, but it felt good to be able to clean out items and not have to pack them! Saturday is also pizza night, and the big decision of where to order ensued. We want to make sure that we have our favorites one last time, and tonight we chose Rocky Rococo, a large sausage pizza with breadsticks. We waited to order until after 5:00, because we drive to pick it up, and we had another Craigslist transaction that netted an additional ten dollars. We always watch a movie with our pizza, and tonight’s selection was Cars. We still have yet to see Cars 2 in the theatre, but we plan to do that soon.
We did have a couple of minor *bad* things happen today. One, the check engine light came on in the car. We are hoping it’s just a glitch, as we just had the car undergo a 30 point inspection for the trip, including an oil change, and really can’t afford to put more money into the car at this point. The second thing involved an accident with a glass of soda and our external hard drive. At this point we’re not certain if any data is lost or if the device works. The cord did get severely bent, however. This is also another item that is not in the budget to replace.
Tomorrow we hope to finish up Ben’s room and make some progress in Catie’s. The kids are a little nervous that their belongings will not be packed in time, but we keep reassuring them, that yes they will. No toy gets left behind. LOL Nick is coming over on Monday to get some more of his things, and we plan to move the unwanted furniture into the garage, so we can Freecycle them. We have a lot of odds and ends in the garage, and are going to be letting people come and take what they want. Kind of like a free yard sale. 🙂
So that’s our day. We didn’t get a huge amount accomplished today in terms of packing, but some days are like that. We really like the fact that we’ve had plenty of time to sort through our belongings, so that we are not feeling hurried and rushed right now. Six months notice was perfect for us; it was far enough away to not feel pressured to do everything at once, but close enough that we weren’t discouraged that it was so far away We do better with short term goals, but that’s just us. You may find that a longer time period works best for you.
We wish all our American readers a very Happy Independence Day Weekend and please stay safe! We’re planning a new blog post for Monday which highlights our local haunts, so please watch for that. Mark is also working on a post that highlights a favorite Walt Disney World resort hotel, hoping to put that out later this week.
Wishes And Pixie Dust 