Day 273, Year 8: Storage Decision
Date: Saturday, August 3, 2013
Weather: Morning and Early Afternoon Rain, Clearing Late Afternoon
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
A decision was made today solving our dilemma as to what to do about our storage unit . . . at least for now. We went to a local self-storage place that we found online last night and rented a 10 by 15 foot unit. It is only a couple of miles from Heather and Jed’s and is right beside the highway. In fact, it is next door to the hardware store we often visit, so it is most convenient. We unloaded the few boxes we brought from the Concord storage unit and will return to Concord tomorrow for more. This unit is slightly smaller than our current one, so we still need to get rid of a few things. But that we know is doable. Since we have already spent a small fortune to keep the things that are in storage for the past ten years, what’s another five years or so? At least this unit is close-by and it is cheaper than what we currently have. Of course, this means we have to rent a U-Haul to get all of our things down here, but I think we will be much happier with the situation once this is done.
Mark went to work at West Marine in the afternoon and I spent time at Heather and Jed’s clearing our stuff out of their basement. They are in Maine, but when they return I know they will be so happy to have their space back. They have generously shared what little storage space they have for the past few years. Now maybe we can repay them by having a bit of space in the storage unit for them to store some of their things.
Tomorrow is a busy day for us. We’ll get up and head to Heather and Jed’s to leave the grandkid car seats in their garage giving us more space for things from storage. If it’s not raining, I’ll also pick green beans. I wanted to do this today, but it rained into the afternoon and the plants were wet. Picking beans when the plants are wet or before the early morning dew has dried is a no-no as it causes the spread of bacterial bean blight. Once that is done, we will head to Concord to the storage unit. We will spend time there making more decisions about what can be trashed and what must be kept. Then we will drive another hour to the coast to visit with friends. On Monday, we will go further north to Kennebunkport, Maine, to visit with my sister-in-law Sue and her husband Brad, and then on Tuesday morning we will return to Concord, take things that we have decided to trash to the local dump, then return to pack the car with as much stuff as possible and return to the Cape. Sometime in the next couple of weeks, we will rent a U-Haul and go get the rest of the stuff. It feels good to have made the decision, but it will feel better once all the work of moving things is done. And it also feels good to put off the inevitable purging of everything. There are just too many memories in all of those boxes. It is true that we haven’t needed most of the stuff in storage for ten years, but then we haven’t lived on land in ten years. It is when and if we do return to a land-based life that we will need the things in storage.
