Last Days of Crazy in California

The last we chatted, we were saying some painful goodbye to friends and loved ones. But now, the adventure has officially begun! But of course, we couldn’t leave without some craziness. Here is how the last few weeks have been! 

In an effort to sell/get rid of all of our worldly possessions, we planned to have an estate sale. We did research and thought this would be the best and easiest way to sell some of our bigger items, like furniture and artwork. The estate sale company told us that they would take care of everything. However, they came for a walkthrough about a week and a half before we had planned to leave and told us that we didn’t have enough stuff to warrant a full estate sale as the buyer asked to purchase a few items. 

To say I was shocked would be an understatement. I had banked on not having to worry about most of our furniture, all of my very large artwork and more. And now, all of a sudden, I had to figure out how to sell all of this in less than two weeks? I’m pretty sure my blood pressure skyrocketed and steam came out of my ears. 

But you know what? I took a deep breath and did what I had to do. I took stunning photographs of everything, wrote out absolutely glowing descriptions, and put those babies on every selling platform I could think of. And you know what? I did it! We sold every single thing in the house (except for my artwork that my family surprisingly and touchingly wanted to keep). It was a whirlwind, but kind of fun honestly. I was a machine on Facebook Marketplace. 

In the midst of selling everything in our home, Jerry was retiring. He has been with his company for almost 37 years. That’s almost four decades with the same company! The only thing I’ve done for 37 years is breathe. His team threw a lovely if small (thanks to Covid) retirement party. It was a really special day for him and I was proud to be by his side. 

Back to the physical fun of selling everything, packing up and leaving. So we had planned to meet the real estate agents the day we were leaving to get the check for the items the buyer purchased and hand over the keys. As we were packing up my Ford Escape to drive to South Dakota (remember we are picking up our truck and RV in Salt Lake City after we domicile in SD), we realized we had waaaaay too much stuff. There was no way everything was going to fit into the car. We had underestimated how much stuff we had that we needed to take with us to SD and into the 5th Wheel and how much stuff we were planning to drop off at our storage unit in Sacramento that we will empty out when we drive back next month. 

And as good at tetris as Jerry is, he couldn’t win this round. We both started to panic because it wasn’t feasible to take an entire car load of stuff all the way to Sacramento and then come back. Luckily, Jerry’s son lives nearby and agreed to hold our stuff until we come back to the area next month. Nathan and Jordan are our heroes!  This had to be a rush job as, like I said, we were meeting with the real estate agents. Jerry got everything done right in time to meet with the agents. But,when the buyer’s realtor walked into the house, he realized he had forgotten the one thing he needed to bring, aka the check. Jerry was playfully annoyed that he had rushed to be on time and the realtor had to drive all the way back home for the check. 

It all worked out though and we officially set off that afternoon for Sacramento. Of course, with Bay Area traffic, we didn’t get there before the storage locker closed and had to spend the night. We woke up bright and early, went to the storage unit one more time to drop off and pick up a few things. We both then had a near panic attack when we lost the car keys. After 20 minutes of frantically searching and tearing the car and storage unit apart, Jerry found the keys ON TOP OF THE CAR. At this point we realized we both had to take deep breaths and laugh. We are on an adventure after all! 

Stay tuned for the first leg of our journey to domiciling and official RV owners! 

Just One More…thing to sell. Please God no.

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