It's really happening

The view we're leaving behind

Controlled chaos - that's what it feels like. At 8:30 this morning, a five man crew from 1-2-3 Moving and Storage arrived, and the house became a hive of activity.

Furniture is padded and wrapped with plastic. One young man spent four hours in the kitchen carefully wrapping and packing all the dishes, kitchenware and utensils. Another young man - the youngest and probably most junior crew member - was assigned to ferrying the scores of already-packed boxes to a loading station in front of the house. Things have been dismantled, packaged, labelled and stowed.

There's a lot of furniture we can't or don't want to keep, and we gave the buyers of our home the right of first refusal to it.  Among the pieces they are keeping are our huge rustic pine table and the barstools for our kitchen island - things we likely won't need in a future apartment. This, plus our ruthless winnowing down of our belongings, will reduce the number of storage pods we need from an estimated five down to three - a good savings.

After a lunch break, the guys returned to start loading everything in the truck.

Our steep Topanga driveway was too difficult to navigate, so everything has to be carried, dollied, and hauled up to the street - the most arduous part of the job. This also came during the hottest part of the day.

It's a good thing we had five beers in the fridge for when the work was done!

These guys are great; friendly, hardworking, and respectful of our home and our belongings. We're lucky to have found them.