The great garage cleanout of 2009 part 1
Yesterday we were exceedingly productive, especially for a pregasaurus*, a husband with a neck problem that's landed him at the chiropractor three times already, a 13-year old with an angst complex and an 11-year old ADHD case who has the attention span of a crow on Red Bull.
*Sunny, I am thinking you are fine with abdicating the throne on that title
We picked up the baby furniture on Friday night at Babies R Us. This required us to rent a UHaul pickup truck and to remove the seats from the Denali to get everything home in one trip. Once we saw the size of the boxes of all the stuff, we realized we were either going to kill ourselves trying to get it in the house, or we were going to need help. We ended up putting some of it in the garage and leaving the rest in the Denali until yesterday, and decided to hire some movers to help with getting it all in the house.
Yesterday morning we all got up and started with cinnamon rolls (such good planning on my sweet sweet baby's part; he had us all prepped with food and snacks for the day of labor. We moved the guest room stuff to the basement (actually we did that on Friday), cleared out space in our bedroom for crib #1, and got the guest room ready to magically turn into the nursery.
We then spent the next several hours moving stuff around in the kids' room downstairs, as we gave Jeremiah the queen sized bed from the guest room. He is very happy with a "real" bed. Zach inherited Jeremiah's captain's bed and the twin bunkbeds are on their way out. This required a lot of reshuffling of toys and furniture and such in their room. The most amusing thing was finding several of those girlie flyers that they hand out in Vegas in various places in their room - supposedly a "prank" their dad played on them by stuffing them in their backpack before they left. Sadly, I could actually see him doing that, and the kids were embarrassed enough that I didn't think they purposely had collected them.
We left all the heavy lifting to the movers I hired to help with the furniture. Those who have been to our house know that we suffer from interminably small stairwells and there is just no way we were going to attempt to move furniture through them. Professional movers (Action Movers, in case anyone needs them, they are GREAT) are such the win for stuff like this. They spent a little over an hour here and had moved a TON of stuff, and helped to clear out about half of the stuff we were going to give to Goodwill in the bargain. No tax deduction for us, but then again, no hassle either.
As if all that wasn't enough, William and the kids pulled every single thing out of the garage and we cleaned it out, sorted through all the crap, and took a full truckload of garage and miscellaneous crap to the dump. We put everything back in an orderly fashion - snowboarding and camping gear in order, Christmas decorations sorted and cleared out, trash packed up and ready for trash day tomorrow, bikes parked so that we can actually get to them ... it's awesome. I meant to take a picture of it before we moved the trash cans back in and the goodwill pile, but I forgot. We do still need to take about a hundred paint cans to the Household Hazardous Waste center; we'll try to do that this week sometime.
The day ended with William assembling the first crib in our bedroom, which is a perfect match of our bedroom furniture. The color and style of the crib makes it look like we bought the whole set together; it is just beautiful. He had assembled the glider rocker the night before, which is next to the crib in our room. This morning he assembled the second crib, and we're nearly done with this whole adventure and ready to get into the business of filling these dresser drawers with baby stuff!
*Sunny, I am thinking you are fine with abdicating the throne on that title
We picked up the baby furniture on Friday night at Babies R Us. This required us to rent a UHaul pickup truck and to remove the seats from the Denali to get everything home in one trip. Once we saw the size of the boxes of all the stuff, we realized we were either going to kill ourselves trying to get it in the house, or we were going to need help. We ended up putting some of it in the garage and leaving the rest in the Denali until yesterday, and decided to hire some movers to help with getting it all in the house.
Yesterday morning we all got up and started with cinnamon rolls (such good planning on my sweet sweet baby's part; he had us all prepped with food and snacks for the day of labor. We moved the guest room stuff to the basement (actually we did that on Friday), cleared out space in our bedroom for crib #1, and got the guest room ready to magically turn into the nursery.
We then spent the next several hours moving stuff around in the kids' room downstairs, as we gave Jeremiah the queen sized bed from the guest room. He is very happy with a "real" bed. Zach inherited Jeremiah's captain's bed and the twin bunkbeds are on their way out. This required a lot of reshuffling of toys and furniture and such in their room. The most amusing thing was finding several of those girlie flyers that they hand out in Vegas in various places in their room - supposedly a "prank" their dad played on them by stuffing them in their backpack before they left. Sadly, I could actually see him doing that, and the kids were embarrassed enough that I didn't think they purposely had collected them.
We left all the heavy lifting to the movers I hired to help with the furniture. Those who have been to our house know that we suffer from interminably small stairwells and there is just no way we were going to attempt to move furniture through them. Professional movers (Action Movers, in case anyone needs them, they are GREAT) are such the win for stuff like this. They spent a little over an hour here and had moved a TON of stuff, and helped to clear out about half of the stuff we were going to give to Goodwill in the bargain. No tax deduction for us, but then again, no hassle either.
As if all that wasn't enough, William and the kids pulled every single thing out of the garage and we cleaned it out, sorted through all the crap, and took a full truckload of garage and miscellaneous crap to the dump. We put everything back in an orderly fashion - snowboarding and camping gear in order, Christmas decorations sorted and cleared out, trash packed up and ready for trash day tomorrow, bikes parked so that we can actually get to them ... it's awesome. I meant to take a picture of it before we moved the trash cans back in and the goodwill pile, but I forgot. We do still need to take about a hundred paint cans to the Household Hazardous Waste center; we'll try to do that this week sometime.
The day ended with William assembling the first crib in our bedroom, which is a perfect match of our bedroom furniture. The color and style of the crib makes it look like we bought the whole set together; it is just beautiful. He had assembled the glider rocker the night before, which is next to the crib in our room. This morning he assembled the second crib, and we're nearly done with this whole adventure and ready to get into the business of filling these dresser drawers with baby stuff!