Leaving Nelson

As some of you will already know, our departure from Nelson didn’t exactly go to plan.

Original plan: 1 week to pack and depart Friday morning.  
Actual results: 1 and a half weeks to pack and depart on Tuesday and Wednesday.  
Here’s why…

We tried to sell a lot of our stuff, held a garage sale, put up notices at work, put things on Trademe, but by the last week we were still left with a large amount of furniture and other things we just couldn’t justify paying over $1000 a year to store, especially when things only cost us $100 in the first place.  

So, we gave in an organised the Sallies to come with their truck and pick stuff up on the day before we were going to leave.  They didn’t show.  When we rang to find out where they were they said they’d never agreed to come pick things up in the first place.  Now we were on the hunt for someone who had a large truck who could pick up our stuff that afternoon, or prior to 10am the following day.  An impossible task as it turns out.  We called St Vincent de Paul, who said they couldn’t pick up till Tuesday.  So, as we knew there was still a lot more work to be done cleaning the house once it was empty, we re-booked the ferry tickets for the Saturday to give ourselves a little extra time.  

Lesson for the day – book with the ferry because they will let you reschedule your trip, indefinitely.  Fortunately for us.

So the next morning we called The Recycling Centre who said they could send over someone that afternoon.  Immediately after we had a call back from St Vincent de Paul who asked if we’d been able to arrange with our landlord for them to pick up our stuff on Tuesday.  I explained that the landlord had said no, because they’d been stung before by charities not picking stuff up as arranged (ha!) and that we’d found someone else who would take it.  They were disappointed and said if that didn’t work out to let them know and they might be able to organise something for that afternoon (argh!).  Later that day, when the Recycling Centre folk didn’t show, I rang them only to find they’d done as so many places in Nelson do, and ‘corrected’ our phone number (because we can’t possibly have a phone number that starts with a different set of digits to everyone else) and therefore hadn’t been able to ring and let us know they couldn’t pick our stuff up after all.  So in desperation I called St Vincent de Paul again, who said yes, we can have someone out there this afternoon, “he’s just baking a cake, so he’ll be there after it comes out of the oven.”  Fortunately they were true to their word and arrived just after 2pm to pick up two truck loads of furniture and household items.

Meanwhile, the freight company who were due to pick up the pallet loads of our worldly possessions arrived at the expected time, in the pouring rain, only to find the pallet lifter they had would not fit the pallets we had.  And as it was Friday, they could not come back till Monday to try again. Disaster!  

This meant poor Boyd had to unpack the pallet boxes and scrounge some new pallets to put underneath them, then re-pack the lot.  In the pouring rain.  The kicker, when the freight company returned on Monday the driver helpfully explained that if he’d been the one assigned to pick them up on the Friday it would have been fine.  The other guy had the old pallet lifter that no-one liked, that was not the standard size (argh!).

So, despite the rain, and the setbacks we were finally ready to go, mostly, by the Tuesday.  

Except the landlord couldn’t come to pick up the keys till the afternoon, and to meet the ferry we needed to leave Nelson by 10.30am.  So, I drove the car full, and with a roofrack load, to the ferry on Tuesday morning, and Boyd stayed behind another night and caught the bus to the ferry the following day.

What this doesn’t explain is all the help and moral support we received from our most excellent friends in Nelson.  Thanks to Chloe and Dave for putting us up for the night (and the following 3 nights), to Greta for randomly turning up and practically packing our entire kitchen.  To Tim for helping with the garden and cleaning the windows.  To Markus and Christine for tidying up the paths and cleaning inside (and figuring out the trick with the sodding cheap vacuum storage bags). To Xan and Hazel for taking some of my childhood things, that I was surprised to find I still had.  To my workmates for assisting with the purge in the form of a Schwap.  To Aine for helping at the garage sale and for taking the giant bookshelf.  To Jim for being kind enough to store some of my things.  To our neighbour who out of the blue brought us baking and waffles with bacon for morning tea.  And to Alli and Roger for giving my roses a good home and for being relentlessly cheerful as we forced them to take our stuff at swordpoint. 

You all make it hard to leave.

Usually when you move you move fairly instantaneously.  From one house to the next, with maybe a short break in between.  This time though there’s a delay of over a month before I will move into a new house.  Which gives me plenty of time to mourn the loss of our little home.  I know that sounds a little overdramatic, but despite a few things that didn’t work out well, our friends and our little rental place (despite the curtains) were great and very much felt like home to me.  

This adventure had better be awesome to compensate! 

But I’m sure it will be.