I’m making progress. Really. Honest. Or at least I have to keep convincing myself of that.
The property manager successfully rented out my place, a nice couple who signed a year lease. Not as much rent as I’d hoped for, but about what I expected.
I confirmed the moving date of March 6th, a week from today. I have a plane ticket to New York City on March 7th, whereupon I will start doing a fast search for an apartment before my stuff makes it across the country.
I shipped two more boxes of books to my parents this morning, and I think that’s finally it. A total of nine boxes went to my parents – mainly books, but also some old papers and things like that. Two more boxes of non-books are in storage at my sister’s.
Six boxes of books are going with me.
And even after fifteen boxes, I still had two full bookshelves worth of books that I was trying to get rid of. Friends took a bunch of them at the Bon Voyage party, I went to Moe’s Books this morning, and they took a few more (mostly textbooks), and the rest will go to the Salvation Army later this week.
I sold my car yesterday to CarMax. It was a nice hassle-free process, which I really appreciated. I showed up, somebody greeted me at the entrance, I said I was interested in getting my car appraised, and they put it in the queue to be appraised and I hung out in the waiting room for ~30 minutes. When it was appraised, they brought me to a cube, went through the valuation of the car, and gave their offer. No haggling. I decided to take it, gave them the appropriate paperwork, went back to the waiting room, and an hour later, I walked out of there with a check. Total time at the dealer was two hours. Very smooth process. I recommend them if you are willing to accept that you might not get every last dollar you could – I didn’t get a great price, but it was a fair price, and not having to stress about the paperwork and doing a credit check on any potential craigslist buyers was totally worth it to me.
I think I’ve actually gotten rid of most of my stuff at this point. The car’s gone, I have a friend that will probably take the motorcycle riding gear, another friend who’s a physics grad student took most of my textbooks. The only major stuff left is my glass-topped furniture, and I got two nibbles today off of craigslist, so hopefully one of them will work out.
Somehow my geek friends managed to resist taking all of my old computer junk at the party, so I went to the Alameda County Computer Resource Center this afternoon. They recycle electronics, but take anything usable and refurbish it to supply it to disadvantaged school districts and programs, which I think is great. So I gave them three computers (two of which were in running condition), two broken VCRs (which will probably have to be recycled), a bunch of keyboards/mice, etc. Plus they take media, so I dumped 44 pounds of video and audio tapes on them. I had to pay them a nominal fee, but it was worth it to get rid of that stuff. And it was tax deductible!
At this point, I think I just need to pack up the stuff I’m giving to Salvation Army (they’re doing a pickup on Wednesday), and then everything else needs to be put into boxes for my move. Craziness. I might actually pull this off!
If you don’t already have boxes, I recommend Bay Area Box Express: recycled boxes delivered to you for pretty good prices. I spent $160 on boxes, bubble wrap, tape and tape gun, packing paper, and a delivery fee.
I forgot to add that I got 66 boxes of assorted sizes and it turned out I didn’t need maybe 20 of them. They got turned into packing material for cushioning. But I was glad to have them for reassurance when I was in the throes of packing.