Around this time last year we were just days away from beginning our journey out to California. This morning I looked back to track down the first travel date on our cross-country excursion and came across some interesting posts. Back then our blog was set to private and only a few family and friends took the time to check us out. So here’s a look at our lives just before we left Chicago …
Time to Pack and Organize
March 22, 2008 by cartersblog | Edit
Our last showing was this morning and I must admit that we hung around in the car to see if the people actually showed up. They did (which is a good thing) and according to the person who showed our place they liked it a lot. Mind you, they had six other appointments today and have been looking for 2 months already so who knows.
And with that appointment the organizing and packing begins! Since the moving company is doing all the major packing we need to get a handle on the essentials, namely what we are taking with us in the car. We do have a list going so that should help, and we have given ourselves the weekend to sort of get things together. It’s important that we take our time on this because the reality of the move is that we might not have our truck full of stuff show up until April 10th.
Here is a partial list of what we think we need to take with us:
- Clothes and shoes, both casual and work
- Jackets, scarves, gloves and hats (in case we run into car trouble)
- Blankets, pillows, inflatable mattress
- Cooler with snacks, bottled water
- Paper, pens, books on California
- Passports, important documents, laptop and iPod
- TV (H has somehow snuck this on our list – we can’t take our regular tv because it is too big. So she thinks we can buy one on the way out there because she doesn’t think she can survive a week and a half without bad reality television)
- Carter’s stuff (food, medicine, bowls, towel, toys, boots)
- Tide, Bounce, garbage bags and cleaning supplies
- Toiletries and first aid kid
- Car flares? (H also added car flares in addition to a tv, nice combination)
H is off getting her hair cut and hopefully will get my text to stop at The Container Store on the way home to get two more small Rubbermaid boxes for the car.
Apparently the couple that looked at the house that day wasn’t interested because our place is still on the market.
As for selecting things to take with us in the car, we changed our planned route a day after this post and didn’t go ‘north’ into Colorado and Utah so the winter clothes were not required and therefore not packed.
While going through our storage in the basement we learned that our inflatable mattress had seen better days, meaning don’t store something like this in a cold basement, so it was thrown in the garbage. We managed to buy an inflatable at a Target, shortly after crossing over into California.
The cooler with snacks and drinks was very handy throughout the trip and I’m glad we brought it. You never have enough Diet Dr. Pepper when traveling across the country with someone on the phone working the entire time and a dog that really wants to sit in the front seat.
Needless to say we did not bring our television with us. H was pretty insistent on having tv once we arrived in California so we bought a small one once we got here, thinking we would use it in the bedroom. Turns out we had no place to really set it up once our regular tv arrived so we took it back. Did I ever tell you to save the box your tv came in if you can? Turns out moving companies charge a premium if they have to move your tv and you don’t have the original. Luckily we had ours or else we were looking at an extra $250.
I’m glad we brought our Tide, Bounce and cleaning supplies because even though our unit had never been lived in it was filthy from the owners, workers and everyone else walking through and having the windows open. Eventually the Bounce was thrown out because our washer/dryer combo doesn’t allow for fabric softener sheets. I swear we cleaned the floors 2-3 days in a row when we first got here.
Then there are the car flares … We didn’t purchase any car flares and it’s not because we like to live dangerously either. Somehow I convinced H we could do without them.
This is a strange week, looking back on leaving Chicago and the excitement of being someplace new and unknown.
