On the lighter side, I occasionally have to smile inside at what the new neighbors must think.
I am still way over my head in “moving in” … that is the process of organizing all of this stuff. I will get to know the neighbors soon, but for now I am still flailing away at the myriad of projects that turn this collection into an organized life. Meanwhile, anybody watching even a portion of this show has to be wondering where all this stuff is going. Even I am becoming amazed.
We have the normal kitchen-living-bedroom stuff, two complete offices, her music (keyboard), my music (3 trombones), large library, my exercise equipment (weight machine, rowing, stationary bike), my reloading (benches, tools, supplies, supplies, supplies), a furnished guest room, gardening tools for a small farm, auto shop, wood shop, metal shop, paint shop and enough parts/scrap material to avoid a hardware store for life.
From the outside, our new home looks like a normal 3-bedroom tract home. The neighbors probably know that two of the three garage bays are double-deep (aka: 5-car garage), but heretofore assumed to be finite in capacity.
On Day 1 the normal (U-Haul calls it their large) 32′ truck pulls up to disgorge its contents into the house. Tagging along is a loaded pickup that backs an 8’x14′ utility trailer with a 7’x4′ steel table, power saws, drill press, 12T hydraulic press, etc. into the garage. Both return again to repeat the process before the day ends.
The trailer parks beside the house and pickup and car in the garage.
On Day 2, the pickup and utility trailer make two more trips. Lumber, steel, benches, tables, bins, garden tools…. Same result with trailer beside house, vehicles inside garage.
Just about every other day for a week or two, this process repeats. Finally, the little red car stays outside, but the pickup continues to disappear at night into the bottomless garage.
We both keep saying we have to let some stuff go, but we keep dragging the trailer 3.77 miles over to the old place and finding money lying around for the taking. All we have to do is pick it up and it is ours…. valuable old pieces of wood, metal, pipes, electrical wire, fencing, clothing, furniture … and on and on. And, what the heck, the new house keeps drinking it in.
Significantly, I brought lots of shelving and raw materials for making shelving along. I still can get to my power tools and the shop (I mean garage) is fully wired for all my 110V stuff. Behind the closed garage doors, a lot of work is going on to stack this stuff vertically and squeeze it into corners. But with the outside temperatures below freezing, I’m keeping the doors closed and a silly 1-burner propane heater running to reduce the chill.
Meanwhile, the trailer continues to leave empty, back into the shop loaded, pull out and park empty and the garage swallows the pickup.
It slows down to two trips a week by the end of Day 30, but we have been laughing to ourselves at the mystery we have to present to the new neighbors. Just about the time we figured they’d suspect us of witchcraft, I realized the logo I created for the side of my pickup is more appropriate than ever.
After the magic trick of getting a warehouse full of merchandise into a little tract home, the neighbors just might figure my little handyman side business can do just about anything.
