Goodbye stuff / on our way to California!

That is a 4.5' x 6.5' x 7.5' box of all our belongings. It gets picked up today to head to California, and we leave on Saturday via plane.

I don't want to speak too soon, but so far moving our stuff across the country hasn't been too expensive or too much of a nightmare. We were a little worried when companies started quoting us $4000+ simply to move a container, with us doing all the packing and loading. The only companies with reasonable prices had horrible reviews and supposedly keep your stuff hostage. Finally we found Door to Door which runs a PODS-like service. Based out of Washington state, they've been around for 17 years, offered a reasonable price structure and had good customer service (compared with UHaul which lied to us about the cost about their competing UBox service).

Our stuff has been in an 8' x 9' x 6' storage unit all year. The challenge was to fit the stuff from the unit, plus everything we had with us in Argentina, into a 5' x 7' x 8' moving container. We could have used two containers, but that would have almost doubled the price, so we decided to cut down if necessary. When we packed up our stuff a year ago, Ben used Sketchup (the free 3D/CAD tool, recently spun off from Google) to determine what sized storage unit we needed. I had hoped to recruit my dad and his masterful packing skills to help us fit everything this time, but he had to work, so we sketched out the plan with him beforehand.

Unfortunately, the actual dimensions of the container were smaller than Door to Door had told us, so we ditched our boxspring in the interest of fitting everything else. The TV took the boxspring's spot in the diagram, throw in a lot of boxes, two bikes, and skis, and we were all set. (Luckily the forecasted downpours had passed and we recruited my sister to help, or we might still be packing.)

Now we just have to get there too! We leave Saturday (we were pleasantly surprised at the price of airline tickets) and are staying in an AirBnB apartment north of the Panhandle in San Francisco for the first week and a half. We'll get to know the neighborhoods and look for an apartment, and if all goes well, have time to take a road trip before Ben starts work on Sept. 24. We're hoping to move into an apartment on Oct. 1 and then it's time to unpack!

- Steph