Thanks all. I appreciate the suggestions and commiseration. Phase 1 of our move is completed. My brother-in-law drove a 20-ft. U-Haul up from Kansas City and took back most of our belongings. Furniture, office desks, dining room and kitchen tables, our bed (we’re sleeping on an air mattress) and a godawful amount of boxes of books, DVDs, Videos, CDs, cassettes (we did throw a lot of pre-recorded cassettes away but still had a couple of boxes of live concerts not digitised and mix tapes sent to me), file cabinets, and various other things. All we have left are clothes, kitchen stuff, some electronics and miscellaneous items. We could not have fit one more thing into that truck, thank goodness because among the things left behind were the kitchen chairs so we can sit down while eating. I’ll rent a smaller truck to finish up at the end of the week. Over the last 3 weeks I’ve set out at least 50 big trash bags and they were hauled away. Thanks to the waste management workers, since most of them were very heavy with clothes and magazines from me, and clothes and electronics from my husband (he’s a pack rat like me, but only with electronics, wires, geeky stuff and tools).
The place looks like a tornado went through. We hired some friends of friends who are out-of-work bartenders. They needed the money and worked their butts off. I don’t think I mentioned that we live on the 3rd floor of a 3-story building.
Does anyone need shelves? When we moved in here in 2003, my husband built several shelves, custom-sized for LPs, DVDs, CDs, cassettes, videos, hardback books and paperbacks. They’re not expertly done, not like a real carpenter would do, but they’re sturdy and have done the job all these years. Unfortunately we can only take a few. We were able to fit two bookshelves and one DVD shelf into the truck, piled on top of everything else. Depending on the truck we get, I’m hoping we can take 2 CD shelves. Yeah, everything we have could fit in my phone in digital form, but I’m old and heartsick about losing physical media, especially books and my movie collection (we have about 2000 DVDs).
Anyway, shelves? Anyone? If so please send a private message. They were built as a labor of love. Finally, we lived in a place where we could fill up almost every available inch of wall space with shelves. We’ve never had a car in the 30 years we’ve lived in Chicago, so my husband took a bus multiple times to a 24-hr Home Depot and brought back wood planks and plywood. On a bus. In the middle of the night to not be a bother to other riders. 16 tall shelves’ worth of wood. He’s amazing.
I threw away thousands of magazines already, but we still have thousands more to deal with. Never, ever, will I buy another magazine. I know I said that before. A bunch, hundreds, would probably sell on eBay but we have no time to do that.
Lordy I hate moving, but I don’t think we’ll ever have to move again so there’s that.