Packing Up

As mentioned in a previous post, step one of our master plan, selling Bragg Manor, was not going well. It's still not. So we decided to try step 1b, renting Bragg Manor. We figured that renting was better than letting it sit empty.

We found a very nice family that had just moved from Arizona to rent the house. The only catch was they had to be in the house by Sept 1, which gave us about a week and a half to pack up our stuff and get out. After 11 years in one place, you tend to accumulate a lot of stuff.

Since any stuff we take with us will sit in storage for at least a year, we decided we had to get rid of as much stuff as possible. We sold a lot of stuff to neighbors the first weekend, then sold and gave away a lot of stuff in a garage sale the next weekend.

It's depressing to find out how little your stuff is actually worth. One item, however, was quite popular: the kegerator. I think I could have sold it for more than I paid for it new, which says a lot about our neighborhood.  (Mickey: Which is why we loved our neighborhood so much and will miss everyone dearly.)

All we had left were the bare essentials, which filled a 26 foot moving van. Packing is a lot of work. There is no way we could have packed everything on time by ourselves. We had a lot of enthusiastic help from friends (thanks Karen, Trish, and MaryBeth). In retrospect, they may have been a little too enthusiastic.

On Sunday night our neighbors threw us a surprise going away party. It is humbling to realize how many terrific friends we have made during our stay in Pennsylvania. We will miss them during our travels, but we will be back some day. (Mickey: Spring of 2011 for sure.)  Here are some pics of the party (Courtesy of Trish).