Hello! If you’ve been following along (we thank you, and welcome back!), you’ll know that we ended up in an empty house for just over a month while our real estate deal fell through, then went through some flips and hoops and finally landed. But what did we do with all our stuff when our house sold and we thought we were closing and moving?
We had to get to packing. We knew that no matter where we ended up, we surely didn’t need nor want a house as big as the one we were in, as amazing as it was. Something much smaller was on the agenda so, we had to get rid of some stuff. We even had a plan to buy an RV! Yep we did, so we sorted and packed our stuff keeping that in mind too, but I’ll get to that one in a bit.
It was mid-September when we rented the first storage unit, a 10x11x20 climate controlled space as you can’t really be leaving much out in the Arizona heat (other than you know, lawnchairs, which we were using in our living room lol…). We soon realized it wasn’t enough so we rented another small 10x10x5 outside unit.
Indeed, it was a job and a half going through everything to end up with the stuff that was moving back to Canada with us. Of course this part is much easier if you decide to just bring it all back with you but, it all still needs to be documented and valued. I’ll show you in my upcoming post on “Documenting Your Stuff” how we filled out the mandatory BSF186 form as we packed so we were all ready for the agents long before we got to the border. It’s really pretty straight forward, you can do it too!
Deciding What to Bring Back
Are you moving back to Canada and either can’t, or don’t want to move it all back with you? Neither did we so we went through the process of sorting what we were keeping, selling, garage saleing, donating/giving away, then what was recycling or garbage. That’s what we did and after all was said and done, it was awesome to donate what we no longer needed to those that did, shred and recycle unneeded paper, and generally just downsize our stuff save for family heirlooms, books and stuff. I kick my behind every single day for donating our old kitchen table and chairs but, I digress…again ☺ No matter if you’re bringing a little or a lot over the border you’re still required to complete the Personal Effects Accounting Document for the border agents so, stay tuned for that.
Not moving back to Canada at all? Maybe you’re moving to an island or overseas and getting rid of it all? Garage sale … how fun! ☺
Maybe you’re thinking of buying an RV and parking in oh I don’t know, say Arizona for the winter? Yes, that was also us. We were 100% serious, and had gone as far as shopping the RV lots in Mesa and Phoenix for a used RV and had settled on a diesel pusher. Bored and flipping channels one night we tripped over this show called, “Going RV”, where the film guests decide to give up their brick and mortar home and go shopping for motorhomes, trailers and all sorts of homes on wheels. I was hooked and couldn’t wait to move into ours! We even went trailer park shopping and settled on a place to park our ‘new to us’ motorhome.
Yep this one was really nice but for whatever reason that whole RV thing wasn’t in the cards for us after all was said and done. Hopefully one day, I think it would be super fun 
The Sorting Process
It was a chore and a half but, also a refreshing exercise. We had some big furniture and furnishings for four bedrooms, a formal living room and dining room that we no longer needed. There were boxes of paperwork that got packed, moved down from Calgary in 2000, shoved into the brand new garage cabinets and not really looked at again. Who even knew all that crap was in there but we sure didn’t need to move cancelled cheques from 1999 back!
We went through the garage, the yard and our two small storage sheds. Every room in the house went through the same sorting, packing, and getting organized process. Sure, it was kinda tedious and time consuming but we figured that’s what we needed to do to document and meet the border requirements for moving our stuff. Of course we had to consider the costs to move everything back and reality was, why pay to move things we no longer needed. Room by room, closet by closet, space by space we sorted our stuff into what we wanted to…
- Keep
- Give away to family/friends/neighbors
- Sell
- Donate
- Recycle
- Shred
- Toss
The “Keep” stuff was fairly easy, except of course for my old kitchen table and chairs that I’ll continue to whine about giving away ☺ We used different sized boxes and lots of totes, some of which were labeled for the RV so the “Keep” stuff had to be separated while packing. No matter, whatever we were keeping got packed up, documented then moved over to our storage units. The totes marked for the RV went in last so at least we were able to get at some kitchen stuff while we lived in our big empty house for a month.
Little things helped with packing like rolls of that shrink-wrap stuff and these vacuum storage bags. We filled the big ones with pillows and comforters, then used the little pump thing to ‘vacuum’ the air out. They work great and save a ton of space – highly recommend.
We gave away a lot of stuff!
- Household plants aren’t allowed to cross the border so, sadly we had to give them all away, again (we did the same when we moved from Calgary to Mesa). But it’s all good, they all went to good homes of our closest neighbors.
- Cleaning supplies/chemicals aren’t allowed to cross either so they all went to close friends of ours, a young couple with two littles
- Apart for a few small totes filled with kitchen goodies I couldn’t part with (baking and decorating supplies, spices, and a few other dry goods we knew we couldn’t get in Canada, eh?), the same young couple got the rest of our food
- I said farewell to my parents huge, solid oak dining room suite. Circa 1960, it really was a beautiful set of furniture and I seriously hated parting with it, especially seeing all the funky stuff the creative folks do nowadays with these old suites. But, we had no room so we donated it to goodwill.
- Along with the dining room suite went a set of coffee and end tables, some shelving units and cabinets, and our old, beloved Ikea kitchen table and chairs. That’s the one thing I regret giving away, and it’s not that it was anything special, it was just special to us with the kids homework scribblings carved into the tabletop. We were down to three chairs as a dinner guest kind of broke the fourth (kind of landed on his ass on the kitchen floor broke!), but it’s just one of those things I still wish we’d have kept. (We finally picked up a crappy set on Marketplace for $50 just so I had a place to sit and work, we’re still kinda eating in the living room ).
- We knew we’d be downsizing from four bedrooms to probably two so, away went a couple of queen size bedroom suites and a few sets of linens/bedding
- Jeff gave away all his landscape equipment – rakes, shovels, a lawnmower, two blowers, an edger, two hedge trimmers, a pole saw, a few gas cans, all the smaller tools and stuff and of course, the lawnmower. Chances are we’ll need a snowblower before we need another lawnmower
).
We sold some stuff, mainly bigger pieces and some glass cabinets that we weren’t going to haul outside to the garage sale, nor were we letting people roam the house looking at furniture. There’s a pretty cool app in the US called “OfferUp”, where you can buy and sell used goods, so we used that to sell a few things.
Garage saleing is crazy business in Arizona. There’s lots of those special garage sale folks that come prowling by the house at 6am or even earlier, before you’re even set up or have the garage door open. Our neighborhood had a community garage sale once or twice a year so we’d gotten in on that a few times over the years, but we’d advertised and ran this on our own as a moving sale.
All the bigger items and lots of smaller stuff all got priced with little stickers and set out on display the night before, so we were ready for morning. It was exhausting, no doubt about it. Some things ended up without the little price sticker so it turned into the dollar sale.
“How much is this?”
“One dollar.”
“And how much do you want for this?”
“One dollar.”
“Okay and how much for this thing over here?
“One dollar.” ☺
We had some good fun after a bunch of that but we sure ended up with a lot of $1.00’s, and a lot of shoppers ended up with stuff that just cost $1. What we didn’t sell, we donated to Goodwill.
The shredding … oh my gosh. So we head out to clean out the garage, long before we had the garage sale as we wanted to use all the garage cupboards to display some of the goods. Unbeknownst to me (and probably Jeff too), was that there were boxes stashed in there that had been there since we’d moved in 2000. Boxes and boxes that were filled with the contents of our filing cabinet when it was in Calgary. Since I was already traveling for work it got packed up by the movers, moved to Mesa and right into the far cabinets, never to be looked at again. Until now that it was time to head back the other way, of course.
There was no way we were moving all that crap back, but I also couldn’t just take it all for shredding before checking out every last paper and making a “Keep” pile. I’m thankful I did as there were a few little goodies I sest aside that were not meant for the shredder. The rest was bagged and hauled to The UPS Store for bulk shredding (yes, there was that much!).
What we were left with was some garbage which we hauled off to the dump.
It was definitely a chore and a half, but also refreshing in many ways. Good, usable things we no longer needed were either donated to Goodwill, given away to friends and neighbors, or sold for a small amount. Boxes of old papers were taken for shredding or recycling, but we found some tiny little treasures (mostly from the kids) that we wouldn’t have found if we hadn’t have gone through the sorting process.
Bit by bit, room by room, and space by space we sorted, eliminated, packed and documented our stuff. Starting with the piano, the spare bedroom suite and the first bunch of boxes, we moved things over to the storage unit. By the last week of September the house was empty (save for our lawnchairs lol…), and the storage units were full and ready for the big move to Canada, eh?
Cats in Boxes
Do you suffer from cat in the box?
If you have a cat, you know. For whatever reason, they love boxes and Miss Lucy is no different.
You can kind of tell which box seemed to be her favourite as she ate part of it, but she found some good hidey spots in some others and had a great time as we got things packed up. Just a little fun, enjoy!
