We’re on the road in Western Montana. Headed east. To the boat. Pulling a U-Haul trailer.
It was not easy, the sorting, packing, selling, discarding and donating all our stuff.
For the previous months, since retirement, we had with increasing velocity gone through everything we owned to make a decision as to whether it would go to storage, the dump, donation, or the boat.
Fortunately, a connection of ours needed a place to rent semi-furnished for a spell while they get settled into the area and look around for where they want to buy. This meant we didn’t have to deal with some of the furniture right now.
But the process was still hard. We breathed a sigh of relief when we finally drove off after our new tenant, the new pastor of the church Lance retired from, prayed over our trip.
We had hoped to get everything into our Toyota Highlander. We did a trial run loading things a couple days before we left. But, once the two outboard motors, three large fenders, and a guitar were loaded, we could see that there was not going to be room for the black tubs containing our stuff.
Off to U-Haul we went to get a trailer hitch installed and to reserve the smallest trailer they have.
We didn’t come close to filling the U-Haul, but I have a feeling we are still bringing too much to comfortably fit on the boat.
Fortunately we have two things going for us. One, we’ll still have our car to offload what won’t fit in the boat…and Two, there are still donation, sell and discard opportunities where the boat is!
I want to mention that Facebook Marketplace and the local buy-sell groups were a big help in selling and giving away things. We were not trying for top dollar, so we walked away from every transaction feeling like it was a win-win.
