Wishes And Pixie Dust

Follow the journey of a Wisconsin family of 4 who relocated to the Walt Disney World area in July 2011

Category Archives: “Stuff”


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The moving process

As we prepared to initially plan our move, one of the first considerations that arose was how we were going to move our belongings from Wisconsin to Florida.  We had three options we could utilize:  a professional mover, self-move using U-Haul, or PODs portable storage units.   We researched each choice, and decided the professional mover was the best option for our family.    We have always chosen U-Haul for our previous moves, and while financially it was the best option, overall it provides for a less than stellar moving experience.  PODS are slightly better, but they are quite expensive, require you to have a place to keep the unit while you are filling it, and the basic fact that you have to fill it, as opposed to a mover doing the work for you.

We have always wanted this to be an adventure for our family.   While moving to Florida close to Walt Disney World has been our dream, it also comes with the harsh reality that everything will be different.  For our children, this will be the most difficult hurdle, as there will not be a routine or familiarity around them.  This is one of the reasons we chose to use a professional mover.  We did not want to start our moving adventure tired and totally exhausted.  We consider this a mini-vacation of sorts, and who wants to do work on vacation?

We chose to use Mayflower as our carrier.   We have discovered there are a lot of online moving companies who want our business, and they will offer a cheap estimate, then all of a sudden find extra expenses they need to charge for before delivery is made.  We wanted to go through a reputable company and be assured that our belongings as well as ourselves would be treated with respect.   Mayflower came highly recommend, and we were impressed with the level of service we received.

Our in-home visit took almost three hours.  He provided us with printouts on information of Clermont, inventoried all our belongings, entered them into his computer, and provided us with a written estimate, which is binding.  If you are considering hiring professional movers, two words of advice:  (1) Make sure you are dealing with a direct agent of the company, and (2) make sure your estimate is binding. Only a direct agent has authority to provide you with an estimate, and you want it to be binding, because then you are guaranteed you will not be charged any additional fees.   Basically, what you see is what you pay.  You may pay less, but you won’t pay more.

Overall we are pleased with the level of service we received and the cost is not unreasonable given the length of our move.  We have moved up our move date to July 22nd.  We now need to sit down and plan our travel itinerary, so we can book hotels.  Our goal is to be in our new apartment or house by August 1.  We discovered that storing our belongings is quite expensive (even more so than the move itself), so we are under a little more pressure to find living arrangements quickly.    Mayflower will extend delivery as much as possible, and it helps that we will be moving in a peak season, which means delivery would have been extended anyways.  So we are thankful that storage is an major expense that can be avoided.

We would love to hear your packing tips.  Thanks for following our dream; we appreciate your support!

Mark and Jen


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Inventory day!

As we reach the 140-day mark today, we thought it would be a good time to update our readers where we are in the process of relocating our family to Florida.  We contacted Mayflower to begin the moving process; as we are waiting to hear back, we decided it would be a good time to survey our belongings and make a final list of what furniture and electronics we will keep, and what we will donate.  The following items made the final cut:

Ben’s Room:  headboard, bed frame, wall shelf, red toy storage unit, metal shelves & metal cubes, TV and DVD player.

Catie’s Room:  headboard, 2 shelf cabinet, Noah’s Ark stool and shelf, 2 wall shelves, TV/VCR/DVD player

Downstairs Hallway:  corner shelf and wall shelf

Kitchen:  baker’s rack, filing cabinet, Kitchenaid mixer, dining room table, Ben’s chair

Master Bedroom:  headboard, green corner 3-shelf unit, 1 wall shelf, jewelry armoire, TV

Living Room:  2 shelf cabinet, stand fan, slide-under-couch table, stool, round table, 2 end tables, 3 hanging shelves, wall perpetual calendar, Wii, computers

Sunroom:  2 wooden scrapbooking carts, laptop table, black rolling cart, long bookcase, short bookcase, ribbon shelf, bulletin board

We have made the decision to leave most of our furniture behind, for two reasons:  one) they are older pieces, and while still functional, are not worth moving; and two) our son Nick will be moving into an apartment this summer and he can use them.   We have a huge and extremely heavy oak desk that we are going to sell this summer.  It’s a high quality piece of furniture, and in excellent condition, but we just don’t want the burden of it any longer.   We don’t expect that our first apartment or house in Florida will be our permanent residence, and we would be unable to move it ourselves to a new place.

The only unknown as far as furniture right now is our video cabinets.  We have 2 free-standing units, and our original goal was to go through our videos and only keep those that would fit in one unit.  However, we have recently heard of a friend who moved to Florida whose video tapes melted in the moving process; so we are now considering buying a Video/DVD Recorder to put all our videos on DVDs.  It would make it easier to move them, and  it would allow us to sell the video cabinets.

Now that the basement is cleared out, our new goal for March is to declutter as much as possible the downstairs area:  living room, sunroom, kitchen, master bedroom.    IWe expect this goal will carry us into April, and have set April 17th as a completion date for this.  After Easter we intend to step up our packing process.  We have very few boxes packed now, and really have not disrupted our living area, trying to keep it as normal as possible for our kids.

Thanks for following along, and we welcome any advice you have to share.


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Keep Moving Forward!

Monday, February 21, 2011

We are sending through an update on where we are with our move.

For those of you following our journey, you may remember that we had set a goal of completely clearing out our basement items by March 31. We are pleased to say that 90% of what we had in the basement is either gone or in the process of being dealt with.  If you had seen how packed our basement was, you would be amazed. We are amazed, really, at the amount of things we had that really were there because we were lazy.  🙂  It’s easier to place things in a box and put in the basement instead of deciding what to do with them.  It really feels great knowing that it’s all gone.

Otherwise we are slowly moving forward.  We had the flu bug visit our household the past couple of weeks; thankfully our unwelcome visitor seems to be finally gone. Last weekend our checking account was compromised; thankfully no funds are missing but we are still working with the bank to get it all straightened out. We have put some items on Craigslist and Ebay, and have made some money, which goes into our piggy bank to help with the move.  However most of our belongings are being donated, either via Freecycle or Goodwill.  We believe strongly in paying it forward and helping others in need.  We are both co-owners of our local Freecycle group; Jen started it in July 2004, and two years later Mark agreed to come aboard as group owner.  We are currently 3,170 members strong, and has proven to be a great resource in our community.  If you are not a member of Freecycle, we encourage you to visit http://www.freecycle.org and join a local chapter.

Mark and Jen


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Long Distance Moving

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Everyone should prepare for a long-distance move. Now, before you think I’m crazy, hear me out.

I think I shared that one of our goals is to have our basement emptied by the end of the March, and that we intend to go through at least one box a day to achieve that goal. We’re definitely on track with that. The interesting thing about this is that we are not keeping most of it. As we go through the boxes, we are very selective about what we keep.

To preface this, we have moved four times in our thirteen + years of marriage. Our first move was from Chicago to Fond du Lac, each of us driivng a U-Haul truck through rush hour on the expressway. Yeah, that took a few years off our lives! The other three moves were within the city, using U-Haul each time. For each move, we have brought all our possessions with us, minimizing some but not really taking an intense look at what we own.

So as we go through the boxes now, for our fifth (and what we hope) our final move, we find that it’s really freeing to let go of what we own. Do we really need to move a 24 year old typewriter to Florida? What about all the saved baby clothes? (Our youngest will be 11 in March). No, really we don’t. We keep what is truly important to us, take pictures of/and discard the rest. We are not doing a huge rummage sale before we leave, but we are donating to Freecycle and Goodwill.

It’s not always easy, and sometimes it’s downright hard to part with items. But for us we are keeping our eyes on the goal, and we would much rather be in Florida minus possessions, than in Wisconsin with possessions. Yes we could move with all our stuff, but it begs the question, do we really want to? And our answer is no.

It’s a wonderful feeling, which is why I say everyone should prepare for a long distance move. Even if you have no intentions of actually moving, pretend you are and discard the clutter out of your life.

You won’t be sorry you did.

Jen