Friday, January 8, 2010

Quotes To Come

We've had two moving companies in and will be getting their cost estimates by Monday. I can hardly wait, since the guy this morning said, "This move won't be cheap," shortly before he left. I think he was doing what salespeople do best - managing our expectations.

Frankly, I already had an inkling that this won't be cheap because his competitor, who came in yesterday, recommended that we not bring an old, beat-up wooden picnic table and the 4 chairs that go with it. "That would probably cost about $400 or more to ship down to Tasmania, and it might make more sense to buy a new one."

So, the small picnic table and chairs cost $400 to move? I can't wait to find out what the dining room table and its 8 chairs cost. Or the sofas. Or the (3) barbecues. Oh dear, I am really not looking forward to reading those quotes when they come in.

Our stuff is actually going on a fairly interesting trip. It is going to be loaded into shipping containers here and then taken by train to a freighter from Melbourne to Launceston, then by truck to the house in Kingston Beach. The whole process will take about a week.

To be honest, I am not surprised that this is going to be a costly exercise. I always figured our chances of getting out of this cheaply were roughly on a par with Tiger Woods' chances that Elin will just ask for a token monthly payment to cover the kids' school clothes.

We've got a house full of furniture and a garage full of boxes and wine fridges. And for all the stuff that doesn't fit, we also have two storage lockers. We've already decided to get rid of some large items that have seen heavy use, but even though we de-cluttered and got rid of masses of stuff before putting the house on the market, we still have enough stuff to fit out a reasonably sized boutique hotel.

We only have a couple of weeks left here, and I suppose it will help control costs if we can reduce some of the stuff we're shipping. I will let LK figure out which of the household stuff we can sell or donate to charity. As for me, I figure I've got plenty of time to reduce the number of boxes we will need to transport the wine in those fridges.

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