With three weeks to go to our hopeful moving date (it was up in the air for some time since they were doing some work in the new place) I figured maybe I should stop putting off the inevitable and go get some boxes.
A great place to get free boxes is the LCBO (Liquor Store) ... heavy duty boxes that come with bottle dividers. They are especially a nice size when ones has lots of books and canning to pack. Larger boxes had to be collected at the grocery store (hit and miss) or off freecycle. I thought I had way too many boxes, but in the end we had to make a last minute trip to the grocery store 5 minutes before it closed to restock and get as many boxes as we could fit in the vehicle.
The kids loved getting boxes ... especially Matthew. Matthew was the designated box thrower. One of the girls would pass him the boxes from the van and he threw them down the stairs, the other girl would then take them to th
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ving room and stack them up there.When we read the signs that the street down the road was having a Street Sale on Thanksgiving Day we figured we'd give a shot at trying to get rid of some of our stuff that day. I made quick work of going through the house and especially the storage room and finding the things we needed to get rid of. The girls were the designated garage sale "sellers" as they were the ones begging to have a garage sale.
Of course the reason they wanted a garage sales was because they wanted to sell lemonaide since the last time I attemped a garage sale they almost made more then me. At which time I said I was not having a garage sale again and have since been a freecyler and kijiji fan. So I explained they were going to have a hard time selling lemonaide when it was freezing outside and people were wearing winter coats (we had a cold October). Instead they sold hot chocolate for $0.25 a cup ... and once agan between that and the flowers they sold they pretty mcuh did better then the rest of the garage sale items. Thanksgiving is not the time to have a Garage Sale, but they had fun and it kept them out of my hair while I sorted through the storage room.
You would think I would have been on track and had no trouble being done on time for moving since the girls were big enough to help out. They did indeed help out but I did find it hard to let them do a lot of things as it was just easier to sort and do it myself. They were able to do the simplier things like the canning and books and straight forwards stuff, plus they liked to fight about who got to label each box, so I would load while they labelled.
During packing time Marietta came down with the Influenza A (or something of that assort) and so she was home for several days. She had a milder case but would get fevers and feel ill at times. A good doze of painkiller and she was okay for a while. She could do small things for short periods and then needed to rest, so she would help me out at time ... selective depending on how well she felt ... or was it how much she wanted to do what I suggested :) Here she is busy packing up the last of the food in the storage room. The storage room became our storage place where we put all boxes ready to go with the hope that we wouldn't be tripping over too many boxes throughout the next weeks ... unfortunately we still were.
This move was the worse move we've done. It was difficult to get any organization as we felt like we had not space or were always tripping over boxes ... empty or full. We tried to keep all empty boxes in the living room so that the only boxes around the house were ones we were working on or full ones placed in corners ... but it just didn't seem to work. It reminded us again of one of the reasons we wanted to go ...the house was just not nicely designed. Every now and then I would go through the living room and restack the empty boxes so we could at least walk in the room and see the different size boxes as it quickly became a disaster area ... with much help from Mr. Matthew, who was a big part of the reason it was always so messy. He had great fun stacking and moving boxes, crawling under them and playing with them. I couldn't blame him for wanting to have some fun and at the same time I was happy it was keeping him busy ... but it did get frustrating at times.
When one is busy packing the children get somewhat neglected ... and this is what I would find when I would go looking to see what he was up to
Yup ... he thought it was great fun to make disasters where ever he went or over turn half-full boxes ... much to my frustration.
And this is where I would usually find him ... looking quite innocent ... as if he would make such a mess!!
Unfortunately he recognized that I was busy and he begged more and more for the TV ... a problem we had already been dealing with before the moving thing came up. He was obsessed with TV and you could say no all day long but he would just keep whining and begging and crying and complaining ... it drove me insane and sad to say I gave in during moving time because I needed him out of my hair and didn't know what else to do with him ... and also because I knew that there would be no TV being unpacked at the new house. We would finally try to put an end to his obsession ... I was not looking forward to it, but I knew if any time was a good time to make a change this was the time.
Stay tune for further updates of the moving saga :)
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