The POD arrived on July 9th, but with the trip to Alabama and Austin, I did not get to start packing until I returned on the 12th. That said, it was also only me and I had my regular corporate job to take care of, so most of the work happened on the weekend before the pickup scheduled for the 19th.
Tuesday, July 12
I was able to get some things done Tuesday, as I was working from home and had someone coming to take away the couches to auction them off. There are certain pieces of furniture we decided to part with as we don’t know if it will fit in our new home and with that in mind, we don’t want the expense of moving it. Some of the other stuff you see sitting out in the kitchen and living room is also getting taken away for either auction or trash.
This is the mess I started with that day! I promised myself I would at least get the living room packed and ready by the end of the day. I thought this was doable, as with the furniture gone, I could get so much more done. I also thought having one room packed would give me a sense of accomplishment and momentum. I will agree it did!
Friday, July 15
I did not have long chunks of time the rest of the week to pack, as I had my regular day job keeping me busy. I was still doing daily purges of stuff after work, trips to Goodwill, packing books and such. When I would go to Goodwill, Lowe’s was right next door to get more boxes!
Thursday night, I had three guy friends of ours to put shelves in the POD to make things easier to pack. They also helped with taking down the mounted flat panel TVs we had, as my husband did not get to any of these tasks before we had to leave for Alabama and Austin. Thank God for good friends!!!
You can see how the shelves are strapped to the walls to make sure they don’t shift about. This was as far as I got in packing during the day on Friday, as I still had work, which took up a lot of my day.
Saturday, July 16
Now that the living room was done and in the POD, I was working on the upstairs bedrooms making sure I could finish those rooms and call them done. I knew they would be a lot less work than the kitchen and basement. I packed clothes the boys wouldn’t need in their foot lockers they just came back from summer camp with. You can see them in the pic below.
Sunday, July 17
I spent a lot of Sunday packing the kitchen. This took forever!!! Packing dishes is time consuming (I really hope I did a good job and they don’t end up all broken when we get them in the end!) I also was making sure I was packing food and spice things we wanted to take well, so I used plastic bins for those instead of regular cardboard boxes. I was happy with how it all turned out!
By the way, ignore the dirty carpet and messy walls, we were doing all this so contractors could come in and paint and recarpet!
Monday, July 18
I took the next two days off, as I wasn’t feeling 100% and I needed to get this packing finished! I tried to see if I could extend the POD to another couple of days, but that was not possible. I also knew it wasn’t a great idea as the furniture movers were scheduled for the 20th and wouldn’t want a POD in their way. I just had to knuckle under and get it done! I wasn’t going to know until the afternoon what time the POD would be picked up on the 19th, so I did as much as I possibly could. Packing all the kitchen boxes I prepped the day before and working on the basement stuff
I also was mostly eating Chinese takeout from my favorite place, as all the dishes were boxed up and I had no pots and pans either. This was my favorite fortune cookie saying I got that week. Isn’t this so true?!
The other thing about packing a POD yourself, is trying to use all the tiny crevices left behind from the bigger packing boxes, but then you also have to be careful not to put anything heavy on top of breakable items. I have a video of one of my favorite “Tetris” moments of packing the POD, but I still need to figure out how to have the right format of video and setup for WordPress. I’m sure I’ll figure it out in a day or two and then i’ll update this post!
During the afternoon, I found out the POD would be picked up anytime after 12:30 the next day. That meant a whole other morning that I could still pack. Boy did I need it! I am very glad it wasn’t first thing in the morning, or I would have been up all night.
Tuesday, July 19
The final moments of the POD!!! I spent time this remaining morning, loading up stuff from the garage, my husband’s tools and stuff. You can see I have my water bottle in the one picture. I made sure I was staying hydrated! You can also see a green garden cart that I used to help move some boxes and stuff. I used that cart and a wheelbarrow to bring stuff around back from the basement doors, so I didn’t have to kill myself walking up stairs over and over again.
I was ready to close the doors on the POD at 12:30pm! They didn’t come for another hour, but I was on time! I wouldn’t want to ever do this again, my legs were so bruised and my nails were so messed up from being dried out and battered with all the boxes. I have told my husband that I will not move a single object out of the POD when it gets to our final destination in Austin. I will tell him and our boys what is in the next layer and what to watch out for, but I refuse to move a single box. We are still so far off from that day, at least it feels that way!
Next post will be about the day the furniture movers come! After the POD was done, I did spend the rest of the day getting ready for them to show up. I did still have a lot of items that didn’t fit in the POD that the movers would take care of. I was also still cleaning out the basement stuff, creating piles of trash, take away (auction or trash), and things to take to family.
Have you ever packed a POD? How do you think I did?
