Farewell Wallpaper, Hello PODS

I am so proud of my kids! Look what they have accomplished, all by themselves, while I have been off in other parts of the house packing books, winter clothes, and dishes! Blondechick14 enthusiastically took on the project, even inviting a friend over to join her.







I have hated that wallpaper ever since we moved in, and now I am wondering why we never could get around to this before?


(Bantam8 took the top photo. Not bad for a beginner, eh? Bantam11, pictured, does NOT agree with me that he needs a trim.)

In the second photo, don't miss the 4th body there in the shadow, standing on a chair--Bantam2, supervising! (Click to see better. He has the same haircut as B11.)


Have you ever wondered how they place these things? This hydraulic lift comes along with the truck, and then he drives the truck out from under it.

A realtor friend recommended the portable storage--it has a number of great advantages. One, obviously, is that the kids and I can load it up as we go along; we don't have to keep taking van seats in and out, loading up our van, making trips to unload at a storage space. My husband really has no margin for this, since he commutes 2.5 hours a day and is no longer just helping out on Sunday mornings, he's preparing sermons more often.

And we'll only touch these items once. We won't have to go to a storage space later and re-load all this stuff again. When this is full, they'll take it away and hold it in storage until they deliver it to our new driveway, when we can unpack at our leisure--no rush to get a rental truck back. In fact, we don't have to have this delivered until we're ready for it, after we get the more essential stuff in place.

It is more expensive than renting your own storage space and moving your stuff yourself with a rented truck. But it's cheaper than having movers move you, and unlike most movers, PODS doesn't charge by weight. A LOT of what we are packing up in it is books and bookshelves!

It's BIG though, and of course you want to fill it FULL before you have them take it away. So I've had moments of doubt: Can we really fill it up with that much stuff we don't need access to for months? (And what are we doing owning that much stuff that we could live without?? I guess we own a lot of stuff that is not neccessary, but nice to have, like books, bookshelves, desks, the occasional table, extra chairs, one dresser per child--which we could condense for the summer--clothes to hand down to the next child, an espresso maker, china and crystal, filing cabinets...yeah, I guess we'll be able to fill it.)

But until we do, the doggone thing is pretty unsightly--and here's the worst thing about that: I forgot to take a picture (for creating a For Sale flyer) of the front of our house without it! Eh.

Yeah. It's been raining here, so I don't know when I could have taken a nice photo anyway.

Maybe we'll make a joke out of it: "Sorry, PODS not included" or "YOU would have taken the picture BEFORE the PODS came!"