How to pack a POD - or not

It is official. We no longer own or reside at our home. I was so busy packing that it did not hit me until a couple hours before the closing (and the walk through) and I just started crying. I am so excited for where we are going, but we have so many memories from that home. I put so much work and pride into making our house a perfect home for us, it is sad to hand it over to new owners, whom we can only hope will love it as much as we have.

So when our house quickly went under contract we knew we would have to be in temporary housing for a while before our new home is ready. Luckily for us, we will be staying with family until we can move to our new home. This also means that we will not need to take most of our furniture to our temporary housing. But where should we put it? It needs to be somewhere for most likely 5 months, at least......

We researched options, and talked to our friends about it as well. We decided to get a POD delivered to our house and fill it ourselves over the course of 10 days (I am sure my HOA did not like that.....). We got the largest of the 3 sizes. It was 16 feet long. It had a roller door that we purchased a lock for and the door faced our garage and was about 5 feet from the garage door. Unfortunately it was too wide for us to fit a car in the driveway with it, so we parked on the street until it got picked up, the day before we closed. On a side note.....our mail was not delivered for several days due to cars in the road while packing - our mail person does not deliver if the truck can not pull up to the mailbox unobstructed. Really???? We never have any cars in the road and it was clear that we were in the process of moving..... but I digress.....

So we changed our mind (or I did) about us loading the POD........we hired 2 movers from a local moving company and let me tell you they worked hard for their money. Two young men loaded almost all our furniture into the tiny POD. It took them 2 hours to complete it all. I had everything except our King bed unassembled and ready when they arrived. When they were done, it was like a puzzle in there. It was filled to the top and there was NO wasted space. Not all of our furniture fit. Several small tables and a chair were left out.

When they picked up the POD I was holding my breath as the PODZILLA got connected and the POD went back to the truck. It was swinging some and I am very nervous about what we will find when we open the doors. I will update on that once we get it delivered to our new home.

Next we filled up TWO SUV's for at least 10 trips each to the storage unit(s). I was packing the kitchen up at midnight, 12 hours before our closing. After 4 hours of sleep, we returned to our not nearly empty home and got everything done, the house cleaned, and ready for the new owners with 30 minutes to spare!

What I learned from this is that next time we will hire people to empty the storage units and load it onto a truck which will make ONE trip to our new house and then they can unload the truck and the POD all at the same time!!!!

The other thing I learned is that my children can take pictures AND erase pictures on my i-phone. I took pictures of the POD, and video of them collecting the POD, and viewed them this morning, but they have mysteriously disappeared. Hmmmm.... Or I could be blaming them and it was me....... anyways - so sorry for no pictures. I hope sharing our process helps one of you!

I hope to share another July 4th inspired art piece in a day or two.....come back then!