Packing Up

Saturday morning at 8am we all met at my parents' house to start packing up the first of two - possibly three PODS for their storage. I think they've done a fairly good job of trying to trim down 30 years worth of "stuff" - for lack of a more appropriate term that I can't use (love you mom and dad!)...but there's still a lot of said "stuff". The boys were trying to come up with a general plan of attack and Dan announces that we'll be done by 11:45am. Frankly, Dan's been known to exaggerate on a lot of things so for him to foresee us being done in less than 4 hours - whatever.

Jake and Austin got right to work playing. They found a cozy home for their shenanigans in the cushions at the base of the stairs:

But eventually we had quite a plan of attack going. Basically Tracy and I attacked this:

We hefted these boxes to the driveway where the boys sorted them and strategically placed everything in their appropriate places. They were able to put boxes and baskets in places I didn't possibly think we could squeeze anything else into!

Mom and Maddie were in charge of any runs to the store when we needed things. Mom tended to be a little nervous about the walls or her furniture when it was being hefted down the stairs so we tried to attack these things when she was running to stores. During one of these runs we got started on the twin beds that used to occupy my room. Dad found an easy solution for getting down the stairs with these:

I know...hard to imagine why my mom was nervous about her belongings! And yes, dad really did ride the mattress down the stairs. This picture was more of a snap-and-jump-out-of-the-way shot.
There were some good things found and Jake couldn't resist trying on the "captain's hat"....

Finally that POD was getting full and at 11:20am Dan called it - nothing else was fitting in there! I have to say we were all impressed with his estimation. The rest of the afternoon we spent hauling stuff to the main floor to get ready for the next POD.

We did find a little "down time" activity and I'll post more about that later. But for now I'll leave you with this shot of my parents standing next to the official sign that says they are moving on to a new chapter: