Gathering and packing and driving

Bob went to a church in West Seattle (the high rent side of town). He loved that church and several people purportedly liked him, but when we put the word out through his pastor the we desperately needed help packing and moving stuff... *crickets*.

One friend indicated that he would be able to help (at some point). I called on several occasions and My Nephew called him as well, at that time we got no response.

So in the mean time we are spreading our time between packing up the apartment and sorting through the "stuff" in storage.

A little side note about storing supposedly "valuable" stuff for long periods. If you are paying for the storage your stuff is worth pretty much nothing, in fact it loses value every day. Case in point. My dad had his storage locker since some time in 2002 at an average monthly rate of $325 his locker cost him... $39000. The main reason for the storage was for the fire truck, he paid (I think) $1000 for it. He then put almost $9000 in to repairs and restoration. The fire truck went from "not quite junk" to "slightly restored" condition. I estimate it would require a new engine and another $10000 to fully restore it. How much did we sell it for? Stay tuned. The other items in storage are of unknown value, some are "rare" others not so much. will HE ever recoup his money? NOPE! Why? because some of the stuff he won't part with, because... "it's hard to find". Why is it hard to find? Because a stubborn old guy is keeping it in storage, is not displaying it, and will probably never sell it. Where is the enjoyment in your hobby if you aren't at least looking at it? But I am the one that doesn't understand.

now back to our story.

The closer the apartment became clean and the storage room sorted, the more we were running out of places to put trash. See the stupid city of Seattle only picks up the "recyclables" once a week and the actual Garbage, every 2 weeks. Houston we have a problem. We had filled the recycle cans and the trash can in one week and there was no more room for everyone else's trash. RUH ROH RAGGY! here is an example of just a couple hours buildup of discards.

I have to stop here and say that we had an extremely patient and understanding manager to work with, he allowed extra furniture to be left in the hallways for days at a time.

Some of the furniture he took and others were taken by residents. 

the solution to our problem was to take stuff to the dump. Unfortunately That was not free. They charge a certain price per pound minimum $20. The first load weighed around 1000 to 1200 pounds.

This picture shows some of the stuff that would go with the fire truck and the first of about 5 or 6 loads to the dump.

Before I forget, I had moved the fire truck to another unit and paid 2 months' rent. Since we now had a title, up on ebay it went. I put it online with a starting bid of $1000 and a reserve of $2000. The first auction ended with a $1000 bid and many emails from people stating how much they would love to have it, but had no place to put it (well woopdedo!). So I re-listed it with a starting bid of $2000, to be continued...

Moving the fire truck was an extremely tiring experience. Thankfully a week before I had bought two battery chargers and added water to the batteries so they were fully charged and with my nephew "the expert", plus a new can of starter fluid, We got it started rather easily. Driving it out and over to the new unit was somewhat easy (this time I did it), but backing it in was a bit more difficult. My nephew and my ideas of hand signals did not quite mesh. Once we got them down and with the use of cell phones (I have a head set), we got it into the new unit. Before I moved it, my sister told me that it was not necessary to double clutch going from reverse to first gear. I later learned that the truck DID have power steering but was low on fluid... Nice! My nephew in his zeal to photograph the various parts OF the fire truck, did not actually take a picture of the fire truck IN the storage unit. so no pic for you!

So. We are going through the unit and my dad informed me that anything that was magazines could be thrown away, so that is what we did. We may have stretched the definition of "magazine" a bit too far.... we'll see.

Back to the apartment. We made a lot of progress when we packed up all the stuff on, under, and around an old drafting table he had. We disassembled the drafting table and were just minutes away from junking it when we got a call that he wanted to make sure that we brought it back with us... that was close.

With the table out of the way that opened up a huge space to allow us to take down 4 bookcases and to use that space as well.

Things that went on daily: Dealing with trash, Making a trip to goodwill, packing, packing, and more packing, keeping nephew on task, various arguments with nephew (in Bill talk) about the validity of his ideas on something or other, acquiring food, more bill talk, debriefing family, collapsing in exhaustion. My nephew informed me that until this time spent with me he had never been physically tired or worn out.

A little about the apartment itself. It used to be a fire station at one time (supposedly). The front steps were totally wonky. You had to go down stairs then outside and then back inside through a locked door and down stairs to the mailboxes, or around the back down stairs and through a locked door to the mailboxes. Going in through the back required going up a short flight of steps and through a "fire door" in to a hall that had NO circulation and the constant aromas of other peoples food (blech). The floor boards and stairs creaked, and about every other day a young lady that lived somewhere in the apartments practiced her OPERA for about an hour.

One more thing... Every morning before I took a shower I would spray it down with tilex, let it soak and then scrub it with a sponge mop that had scotch brite attached to it. This took 5 days to get to a point that I thought was clean enough (gross).

Next Post:
"panic sets in" or "how do you move 85 boxes weighing an average of 50 pounds 15 miles with 2 people and only one truck?"