Selling Our Virginia House
Meanwhile, back in Virginia, our realtor was busy showing our house to potential buyers. By the Wednesday after the open house we received two solid offers. We accepted the better of the two offers, which gave us a closing date of Monday, June 10. Which also meant our date for being moved out. I still couldn’t permanently leave the area until June 28. So, for the two-plus weeks of being homeless in Virginia my cousin Mary offered to let us stay with her.
Our next step was bringing in a PODS container for loading out the contents of our house.
Prior to bringing in the PODS container, we held the obligatory pre-moving yard sale. I’d already been listing some higher value items – things too nice for a yard sale but not worth bringing with us – in online listings. Most of those items had already been sold.
Most of what we didn’t offload during our yard sale we either kept or hauled to the local thrift store. We also made packing easier on ourselves by including our clothes washer and dryer with the house sale.
The Pod
We opted for the largest PODS container offered, sixteen feet long by eight feet wide by eight feet high. Terms of service allowed us 30 days total use of the container, delivery in Virginia, transporting to Charlotte, and final pickup. We planned to have it ten days in Virginia to load, then delivered to Charlotte several days prior to final sale. Once in Charlotte we’d have another seven days to unload.
Arrangements were amazingly easy. Once we had the dates for delivery and pickup in Virginia, delivery and final removal in North Carolina, the PODS rep quickly set everything up. On the big day of Virginia delivery, the PODS container arrived just as promised.
As a former logistician, I must admit being impressed with the way the truck handled delivery. Given the narrow width of our driveway, with obstacles on both sides, delivering a container on a truck this size could have been difficult. The delivery driver made it look easy.
The Move
Within a few minutes of the PODS container delivery Winnie was planning the loading. The first items in were my two large wooden bookcases, easily the largest pieces of furniture we own. We packed dense. After we moved empty pieces of furniture in, we filled them with smaller stuff. Anything we could disassemble, we did. We also continued to get rid of things we didn’t feel were worth moving.
Over the next few days the PODS container slowly filled up, as our belongings melted away from inside our house.
We had planned for ten days loadout but finished in seven. We did get help from my cousin Raymond with a final few large, heavy items Winnie and I simply couldn’t move by ourselves. At this point, our house was empty except for a few items we planned on hauling ourselves, and the things we’d need while staying with Mary.
Right on schedule, the PODS truck showed up to haul away our now-full container. On Saturday morning, June 8, with the house empty and our Jeep and RV once again full of household items, we drove off for another visit to our future new home in Charlotte.
Taking Delivery
This was an easy drive, compared to the previous two trips. I was once again hauling the utility trailer, loaded up but not nearly as heavy as on the previous trip. Winnie was driving the Jeep, and we mostly maintained our two vehicle convoy all the way down. Of note on this trip was Winnie’s houseplants. We had plants in the trailer, the RV interior resembled a jungle, and there were a few small prized plants in the Jeep as well.
We had timed our PODS delivery to arrive Monday, June 10, which also happened to be our closing day for the Virginia house. So, we signed all our necessary paperwork several days in advance, with buyer paperwork and funds pending.
Right on schedule our PODS container arrived early Monday morning. We opened it up to discover everything was still packed the way we left it. Nothing was shifted or obviously crushed. So far, so good. Now we had to unload.
Almost DIY Unload
I had planned to head back to Virginia the next day, and Winnie wanted to stay with me. Which gave us one day to unload. We needed help.
I let my fingers do the walking and started my search for paid unloaders by calling our Charlotte realtor. She, in turn, referred me to a moving company she frequently worked with. The moving company dispatcher in turn quoted me a price for two people, two hours minimum work. I agreed, and while waiting for these two people Winnie and I started unloading.
The two people we hired showed up a few hours later. By now, incredibly, Winnie and I had already unloaded almost half the container – the easy half. With help from our two laborers, we had the rest of the container unloaded in less than two hours. We did in fact get our money’s worth of support from those two people. It was worth every penny paid.
What took us seven days to fill up took a total of five hours to unload. With the PODS container empty, we surveyed our new house. Boxes and bits of disassembled furniture were scattered everywhere. We had something to look forward to once we returned for good.
