Our lost together locations

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Preparing to get lost

For the past few days we have been working hard at getting ready to sell our place.

This involves some serious de-cluttering, minor repairs, painting, and packing everything we own into storage.

It's amazing how much crap you can fit into a 650 sq ft apartment without even trying. We've rented a storage unit that's somewhere between 150 and 200 sq ft, and it's almost packed to the rafters. Teetering towers of boxes, clothing vacuum-sealed bags, furniture. Pots and pans, towels, winter coats. Our mattress and boxspring, our sofa, our dining room table.

Yeah, you read that right. We don't have any "real" furniture in our place anymore. We pulled the mattress from the pull-out sofa, topped it with an air mattress, and hauled the camping chairs up from the downstairs storage. Add a couple of milk crates, and we're camping out in our own apartment! Here's David waving from amidst the chaos:

Every time we come back from storage, we're somehow faced with still more stuff. Though I have to admit that what you can see in the photo is about half of what's left, so I guess that's a good thing.

There's literally nothing at all in the bedroom except, now, painting supplies, and a few lonely items of clothing hanging in the closet.

Other things we've been busy with in getting the apartment ready: meeting with the real estate agent, eating what's left in the fridge and deep-freezer, and ripping up carpet to reveal quite lovely parquet underneath (and I'm not a huge fan of parquet):
And today we primed and painted the bedroom. If we can get it emptied out some more, we can tackle the main room starting tomorrow.

On the travel front, we've been doing some planning too. We've been contacting WWOOF hosts in Ireland, and so far haven't had much luck -- who knew autumn was such a popular WWOOF season in Ireland? Almost everyone who's gotten back to us (and we've contacted about 20 hosts so far) is full up through October. We did have one recommendation that we're waiting to hear back about, friends of one of the full hosts, and another host who contacted us today with an offer based on our posting our availability to the noticeboard.

Based on how difficult it's been to secure a host in Ireland, we've started looking at hosts in France earlier than we'd planned to. I'm hoping we can find something in the south of France, where November and December are harvest season for things like olives. Fingers crossed!


Wine and cheese tasting @ Strewn WineryImage by Vincent Ma via Flickr
This week we head to Niagara-on-the-Lake to take advantage of my department's lovely wedding gift -- a stay at Wisteria House, dinner at the Charles Inn, and a biking wine tour of Niagara wineries! The following day we're off to see West Side Story at Stratford. Good way to start our non-school year!

posted by Jodi
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4 comments:

Cordelia said...

I guess the Bonde gets to go with the apartment once more!

Farewell, Jodi's tony apartment. We hardly knew ye.

Jodi said...

Yeah, the real estate agent recommended leaving the shelving as a selling feature.

*You* may not have hardly knew it, but after more than 5 years here, I'm ready to let it go. :)

Sassan Sanei said...

You must be so excited. Fun times ahead!

Definite Article said...

Ooh! We picked up a Niagara Merlot in duty free for the moms... it was quite nice -- I wish I could remember the name. Enjoy the week's travels!

And kudos to you both for de-cluttering and starting your (officially state-recognized) lives together in such an amazing way. I am itching for olives in Sicily.