Altoona, IA - Preparing the Surface

Paint can directions always begin with: Prepare the Surface.’ Required before you paint so that the paint job is smooth and lasting. Such an easy phrase to say, it just rolls off your tongue. But, oh, so much work: spackling, grouting, caulking, sanding, etc. All the messy ‘fun’ things. Well, the directions for moving should say the same thing: prepare the surface. In this case, the surface is the house. And, that is what we have been doing for the last two weeks. We’ve been doing all the messy ‘fun’ things: wrapping, boxing, disassembling, piling, etc.

I have gone through 4 - 2’ diameter rolls of shrink wrap, 2 boxes of wrapping paper and 17 plastic 66-qt containers, 9 picture boxes and countless rolls of masking tape, brown packing tape and regular 2” Scotch tape. It might have been easier to shrink-wrap the house and move it down the highway with a sign” WIDE LOAD’ attached.

We have all the furniture ready for moving,

all the big pictures wrapped and boxed,

all the little trinkets in plastic containers,

The only thing left is the moving and - we’ve hired Jeff and his crew to do this. No more moving for these two old people.

Jeff comes tomorrow to take our stuff to our storage room and then again next week to take the rest to Lloyd and Mary. The ‘prepare the surface’ is almost done and all that is left is the moving. And, we’ve hired that out.

Will we be done? Nope, we’ve got errands then: office supplies to a teacher we know for his school, household linens and kitchen items for the Free Store, household chemicals to a hazardous waste facility, and, hey, I found some more sterling silver to take to the gold an silver dealer. Whoo-eee.