The move-out ends

Yesterday, the packers came and packed. Today, the movers came and moved. All was relatively uneventful; both days, they were there by 8:30 and done by about 2. The house just has the items the buyer wanted to keep, and many rooms are almost totally empty, particularly the downstairs. Here's the view from the bay window looking back into the sun room:

Here's the sun room, with only a couple of items left:

And the master bedroom, totally empty:

And finally, the truck carrying everything (we hope) to Los Angeles (we hope!):

I'll have one more update after the closing, just the put a final (?) capstone on this blog.

The move-out progresses

 For a while, the house was getting emptier. First the piano went:

Then, one of the most frustrating things about moving out: finally cleaning up things the way they always should have been. For example, this is the garage after removing some things, but mostly just cleaning up and organizing stuff. Why didn't I do this when I lived here?

Then, this past Monday was the first real mini-move. I disassembled the main bed and the wardrobe in the primary bedroom, and hauled them (and the mattress downstairs). Some strapping (and quite bilingual) fellows from Habitat came and hauled that away, along with a love sofa (see the previous post), a giant wooden desk with chair that came with us from Berkeley), and a small end table. The back room feels quite different. (For the record, Habitat will not take mattresses -- or love sofas with huge tears in them.)

Since them it's been pretty much all day going through every drawer, every cabinet, and clearing everything out and packing it into boxes; the goal is empty, clean drawers and shelves everywhere. (And of course you have to pull the drawers out, because there is some gross stuff back there behind them -- it's unclear how it gets there, but somehow it does!)

As that's been happening there have been almost daily trips to Goodwill; so far, between 10 and 20 cubic feet of stuff, plus about the same amount in trash and garbage. Today's final bit of work was moving the last dozen wine crates that we've been using as bookshelves since Berkeley (and I think Lilya brought a few from New York before that). Here they go!

As all that stuff is being pulled out of drawers, however, it has to go into boxes, which are slowly filling up the spaces depopulated by furniture moving out. 

As of today, we are at one week until the movers show up for the day of packing; then Friday is for loading (which I'm assuming is not going to take a whole day, but who knows). Tomorrow, I feel like the rest of what needs to be done in the basement can get done, and then I think everything else gets left to the professionals.