We had a weekly countdown, and once we hit May it all became a reality. The house was due to close on May 16th, therefore the moving jobs became a little more personal.
- Literally cooking everything left in the freezer, and not buying anything other than fresh food. Starting to go through all my herbs and spices and getting rid of older ones or getting rid of those you buy for one recipe and never use again! I do buy some spices (especially Indian cooking ones) in bulk so some of those were vacuum sealed and packed away. The only foods you can pack are non perishable ones, so some dried food was also packed but why take up valuable container space with things you can buy later?
- Starting to pull out clothes to take with us in the large soft but wheeled suitcases. This one was hard as we had to plan for at least three months living on a canal boat (with limited storage) through the English summer months and through the Autumn too. This meant layers- largely of thinner clothing but also some warmer bits and pieces as it was unlikely we'd see the rest of our clothes until Winter due to the time it can sometimes take to buy a house in the UK. There was an added element in that we were also still travelling back on the Queen Mary 2 so we had to pack some posh clothes too! As you can imagine, I did end up over-packing and Dick did the opposite but I did have him covered too :-) Unfortunately once the movers came we didn't have any choice but to take everything we had pre-packed with us.
- Emptying the house safe and starting a file folder of essential documents that needed to travel with us (including the aforementioned medical records), and those that could go into storage.
- Washing anything with removable covers that was going into storage so it would stay fresh whilst in storage. Things like cushion and seat covers, washable rugs etc. They were then stored in vacuum sealed bags. We used quite a lot of vacuum sealed bags to reduce the amount of space that clothes, towels and sheets, for example, took up.
- We went for a last drive in the Mustang to places we had never been to before but always meant to, and said goodbye to her after owning her for 20 years. Lots of reminiscing about all the road trips we had in her- just a few of many: Florida keys, Natches Trace and Route 1 in California.
- Cancelling car related insurance and services- AAA and petrol accounts.
- Scheduling final utility readings. That one became a huge issue with National Grid electricity and our solar panels, and one that has still not been solved.
- Cancelling Dottie related insurance and subscriptions.
- Dick arranged to ship his motorbike and bring the VFR with us after all. She would be shipped with a specialist vehicle shipping company but had to be included on the same TOR (UK customs declaration) as the rest of our belongings. This was the first hint of the issues of my name being on the official document and not Dick's. However, they were able to confirm that his name was on the application, and she was packed up to go!
Loading her up for phase one of the journey- empty of petrol and no keys!
We said goodbye to our sweet Dottie on May 13th- the longest day. We went out to dinner that night and drank far too much, but I doubt anyone would blame us for that.
On May 14th the movers arrived. Unfortunately, the container itself had not. They arrived with all the packing materials and wrapped everything we had left. One amusing moment was that I did give them permission to pack everything in the kitchen except anything with plugs, (the electrical things we were leaving behind) and I came back an hour later to discover they did literally pack everything including my old washing up bowl and drainer- both of which were very worse for wear and I was literally using them until the last minute and was intending to throw them out before we left. They quite rightly pointed out that I did say 'everything' and they had done that. I still say that a woman would have checked that first! It will make me smile when I unpack them and bin them.
Another of our neighbors, Tony and Jess had invited us to dinner- perfect timing!
The big question was will it all fit??
The next day the movers arrived with a big van. They said it was the approximate size of the container, and so they would pack it as if it was going in a container but would have to repack it once the container did arrive at their depot. The team leader was the one putting the jigsaw together so to speak and boy, did he make it fit. We did have one pile of things in the garage which were considered not in the priority packing in case we did have to leave something behind. There were only a couple of things that did not make it.
That left us with an almost empty house but enough left for the new owners that we could stay there one more night. We had left our enormous CA King bed and all the linens to fit it, both TV's, the sofas, rugs etc, so it was still livable. I did have to ask a neighbor for some paper plates and knives to finish up our fridge leftovers! The next day I cleaned the house from top to bottom, washed everything we had used, and we left to stay with our neighbors Dan and Jennie who lived down the street. In many ways it was a relief to leave the house and the memories of our Dottie there too.
The house exchanged on May 17th and the money was in the bank.
In the next few days we decompressed, sold the other car to another of our neighbors, Phil, and celebrated one last time with our friends and neighbors.
All that was left to do was to pick up our rental car and start the next stage of our adventure!
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