Goodbye PODS

As most of you know, we've been trying to sell our house so we can move to Wisconsin, where the church plant is that we'll be leading.

Well, our house has been listed with an agent for four months now. Before that, we had two months of a half-hearted For Sale By Owner effort while we were getting it ready to list; so altogether, we've been trying to sell it for six months. In the past two months, we've only had one person come and look at it. (We had a showing last Friday, the first one since July. Excitement!)

It was back in April that we began trying to fill up a PODS. This baby monster has been sitting on our driveway all summer while we've been slowly adding to it. Bantam16 and I have been painstakingly, anal-retentively filling every crack and cranny so that there would be no wasted space, no shifting of contents when it's moved, no squashing of lightweight boxes by heavy items on top. It's all been so carefully, thoughtfully done that I just couldn't bear the thought of unpacking it.

See the wooden joist on the right and on top in this picture? From the front to there is one-fourth of the space in this storage unit. So you can see that we had it nearly 3/4 packed--oh, let's call it 3/4, because if the stuff in the last quarter were turned and pushed back, and if the random chairs and baskets and small bookshelves that were removed before I snapped this picture were all pushed back in there, it would be over 3/4 full.

But the flames of hope that we would sell before Christmas died down to barely warm embers, and common sense dictated that we unpack the PODS to get to the stuff that's in the very first row, stuff we packed there back in April when winter seemed a long way off. Stuff we thought we could live without for awhile.

For example, my husband's espresso maker--just because he was on a coffee kick at the time! (What WERE we thinking?) Not to mention my filing cabinet that we have twice wished we had access to, and various beloved titles that Papa Rooster had missed and was miraculously able to locate among all the boxes of books. And all the winter clothes, boots, coats, hats, and mittens! With the weather cooling, that clinched it.

I knew that no matter how badly I hated to do it, I'd have a lot more peace if we did. It only took Papa Rooster and Bantam16 an hour or so to unload most of the contents into our garage--and how happy we were to be reconciled to our belongings once again!

In fact, we've decided we can live with a garage full of boxes and furniture. It's been years since we could put our cars in the garage anyway, what with all the bikes and recycling bins and soccer balls and strollers and rollerblades. It'll be a lot cheaper than continuing to pay the monthly fee for the PODS, and we'll have easy access to our stuff. I suppose it won't look so great to a potential buyer, but maybe it will communicate what motivated sellers we are. (All packed up and ready to go!)

It's a bit of a gamble, because if our house sells next weekend, we're gonna wish we still had it. But that doesn't look very likely at this point.

I can't believe how much more peaceful I feel now that we've finally done the deed. For one thing, since we've decided to let the PODS go, I can stop combing my house for things to fill it up with. Since we started our homeschool year, I've only managed to find teeny chunks of time to think about that. At the rate I've been going, that thing was going to be sitting there till next April.

But the main reason I'm feeling peaceful, I think, is because now I'm set for whatever happens. If we sell soon, great--we've got lots packed up and ready to go. If it takes another year to sell our house, I'll be disappointed--but at least I can get to what I need in the meantime.

And the best part of all: I won't have to buy new winter coats for all of us!