By Bruce Carlson
We have the North Aurora house sold. We’ve closed on a house in New Athens. Now it’s time to sort out the moving process. The first step was clearing out things at the North Aurora house. We had gone through the radon remediation process a couple of years ago. Part of the process was clearing the stuff out of the crawl space. We have been married for 50 years and have moved several times over the years. You would think we didn’t have a lot of stuff, not.
To get ready for the radon remediation we cleaned out the crawl space. We went through all that stuff and tossed things that probably haven’t seen the light of day in 20 or more years. It was amazing all the stuff we carried with us over the years. So when we started working with Alecia to sell the North Aurora house, she said time to clear out stuff. We thought we were in good shape. The crawl space was pretty open. I guess it was the stuff in the rest of the house.
Move our stuff
So we got a storage locker and started to move our stuff. We were amazed again at the stuff we had in our house. It also became a nostalgic trip into the past. We would open a box and see something and the memories would come flooding back. Our daughter-in-law gave us a question to test if we should keep something or not. If it brings joy to you keep it. If it doesn’t get rid of it.
Another challenge was packing things. We bought a bunch of boxes from U-Haul and in no time we had them filled. I kept hauling box after box to the storage locker. The locker was filling up and the house still had a lot of stuff. Where did all this stuff come from? A sad part of getting ready to move was taking down all the pictures on the walls. As the pictures came down the house started to echo. The house was losing our touch.
Karen through her networking groups had access to several moving companies. We asked for bids. It was surprising to see the range of cost. Also what services one company would do over another. We selected Prager Moving and Storage from Naperville, IL. Steve Bonnischen was the agent we worked with and he was always available to answer questions. He made the moving process so much easier.
Once we had a contract on the North Aurora house we moved everything out of the storage locker and back to the house. I put everything in the garage. We had room to park one car in the garage. The Scion could stay in the driveway. Another decision we had to make was if we wanted the movers to move the upright freezer in the basement. If the movers moved it, what do you do with the stuff in the freezer? It was going to take the movers several days to get to the new house.
A place to put the freezer
Scott offered us space in his garage to place the freezer. This would let us put the stuff from the freezer in coolers and move everything at the same time. So we rented a U-Haul truck. Paid a couple of guys to carry the freezer out of the basement and into the truck. I also loaded a bunch of boxes from the garage into the truck. The freezer stuff was out of the freezer for about a day. The coolers kept everything frozen. Cost wise it was around a break even, us or the movers. We minimized the time in the coolers.
Let’s talk about the movers. The guys from Prager Moving were fantastic. It took a little bit of time to figure out the moving dates, but the company worked with us the get that sorted out. The truck come to the house on May 2nd, right at the time they said. We have packed most of our stuff in boxes. However, there were larger items that they prepared for moving. David and his crew were amazing. They worked together to get everything on the truck. It took a little over 6 hours to get everything loaded.
As the truck pulled away from the house, all that was left was some of our personal items for the next couple of days. We had an air mattress to sleep on for the next couple of nights. We packed up our car with our personal stuff. We made a swing by the Catholic Daughters meeting. Then we stopped at Adam and Tracey’s house to say goodbye to them and the boys. back to the house and one more night there.
The next morning we got up, with no alarm., and did several errands. One more stop at Adam and Tracey’s house to drop off some stuff. Then a stop at the UPS store to ship something. From there we started the journey to a new life. I still had a few more things to do in the office, but that would be declining over the next few weeks. Our move will take us into new ideas and opportunities. We arrived at our new house around 5:30 pm on May 3rd.
We were home
We were home, though it was really just a house. We move in on Thursday, May 4th. David and his crew arrived a little after 8:00 am. They quickly and efficiently unloaded all of our household goods. We had heard horror stories about other people’s moves, All our stuff arrived in good shape. Nothing was broken, nothing was missing. The guys got things in place and were considerate of our things. The move was flawless. We can’t say enough about our move.
The guys were done a little after noon. As the truck pulled away we looked at all the boxes. Where did all this stuff come from? It couldn’t be all our stuff. It was time for us to begin putting things in their place. It took us over three months to get everything packed. I wonder how long it’s going to take us to unpack everything. It’s becoming our home and it’s good to be here,
A new life
We hope you are enjoying these articles and are willing to continue to follow along as we move through the process of selling our house, buying a new house (to become our home), and the adventures of learning about life in southern Illinois, Bruce & Karen.