sonia | Can haz stuff!

On Tuesday I successfully took two buses and walked a mile and a half to get to the PODS depot near the Oakland port. The scheduled movers with truck were there early. They loaded the truck and unloaded it here efficiently and carefully. Now I'm officially moved to the Bay Area, with a job working remotely, a rented place to live, and my stuff. (There was no place to put the PODS container at the apartment I signed a lease for first, and I decided to keep those plans in place with the new apartment.)

I'm amazed that a plan with so many moving parts went off as smoothly as it did. Everything had little glitches and annoyances, but I'm here! I get to stay! The sunshine is glorious!

I was wondering if my remaining furniture would fit in a one-bedroom apartment, and it does. I've unpacked about half the boxes, and so far everything has arrived intact. A lot of the rest is books. I'm unpacking all the boxes, and then leaving some of the ceramics in bubble wrap and stashing them back in boxes in the garage, since they're a pain to pack, and I might be moving again soon. Super-grateful for the garage to store bikes, empty boxes, and things I don't need right now.

I like this apartment quite a bit, and could see myself staying for a while, despite hassles with shared laundry facilities and fragrances. The realtor in Portland and I just reduced the price of the house there because apparently everyone wants a remodeled kitchen and bathroom, so my house isn't chic enough to bring top dollar. I'm still probably going to end up with about double what I paid for it, so I'm not complaining, just wondering if I'll be able to afford to buy a place I want here. I'm liking El Cerrito enough to consider buying here, which is a little less expensive. I'm guessing it will be like the apartment - eventually something great will show up, but it might take longer than I prefer.

In case anyone's curious, here's the $ cost breakdown on this move. (Of course there are other huge costs in terms of planning time, physical effort, lost sleep, etc. I did just start sleeping better this week after months of waking up at 4am.)

Moving me and stuff:
430 PODS container delivery to the house in OR
1561 Transport PODS container to Oakland CA
687 Minivan rental for 6 days, one way
* Note that I found 10% off coupons online for the above, and reserved in March so gas costs were lower for the long-range container transport.
28 Parking permit from City of Portland for PODS container
550 2 movers to load PODS container in OR, 3 hours.
751 Truck and two movers in CA, paid for 3 hour minimum, only took 2 hours.

165 Gas for the trip down
157 Motel in Ashland OR

180 Misc specialized boxes. Tape. Bubble wrap. Even though I had some and friends gave me some.
270 Big order of boxes, bubble wrap, furniture blankets, and big elastics to hold blankets on furniture.

New apartment:
3850 First month rent + deposit on apartment
20 Wire transfer fee for rent. First time I've done that!
135 Apt. cleaning before I got there

51 Application fee for Oakland apartment
700 Deposit for Oakland apartment (refunded)

141 Renter's Insurance. The first apartment required it, and I decided to go ahead and keep it.

Fixing up the Portland house to sell:
1050 Power-washing the driveway & sidewalk, tree pruning
100 Fix sticking front door
1500 Get two rooms painted after I left.

635 Haul captain's bed and sofa away (I hope they found a place to donate them!)

1.10 Change of address at USPS. Yes, they charge for this now!

On the positive side, I got $870 from selling items, and I should get more when my furniture goes up on the online auction. I received several generous cash gifts from friends. I returned about $200 worth of stuff I had recently bought when I decided to move, and pretty much stopped spending money for a few months as I used up and got rid of everything.

And, I'm getting regular paychecks from my remote job that keep the costs from being a hardship. For years I've been telling myself it's expensive to move. And it is. I'm still so glad I did it.