Tag Archives: boxes

In (sic) glorious transit (Part 2)

Posted on November 11, 2009 | 1 comment

Post # 13

Days to departure from Western Canada = 4

…continued from Post #12

Monday night/Tuesday morning, Oct. 25/26

Heading down the home stretch before my departure from Saskatoon, my primary accomplishment – as it had been throughout the moving process, it now seems in retrospect—was to whittle down the list of things I hoped to do until I got to the list of things I was actually able to do. (The list-making went on in my head as I worked: there was no time to make actual lists. :))

My goal with what remained after I had shifted most of my belongings to storage was to separate the wheat from the chaff. I had hoped to sort out what I didn’t need from what I did, throwing out such things as bottles of dried old nailpolish, leftover skeins of wool, account files that Revenue Canada no longer required me to keep, etc, etc. But sorting takes time and after the several family crises and moments of joy and farewell visits that had consumed my attention over the previous week or so, I simply didn’t have enough of it to do all that needed to be done.

1718As a result, the sorting I managed to do mainly consisted of trying to separate the things I’d need while I was in Alberta for two weeks and a bit, before the final move to Toronto, from the things I wouldn’t need until I got to Toronto. Even this attempt was only partially successful. Despite working on Monday evening until 2 or 3 a.m. and a resumption of activity at 6 a.m., by the time my apartment manager came to do the damage inspection at 9:00, I was throwing everything into boxes and suitcases willy-nilly. Since the manager stayed around to see if she could help until I left, I was distracted, and at the end I just filled and taped, filled and taped until everything was packed. Half of those boxes went unlabeled.

Finally at about 9:45 a.m., I told Maureen (the apartment manager) that I was either going to miss my plane and clean the oven and the fridge, or I was going to leave those things undone and she could deduct the costs of cleaning the two appliances from my damage deposit. She seemed to understand completely. She even looked a bit worried at what I still had to do before I caught the plane, and kindly offered to take the equipment from SakTel back to the store for me. I am eternally grateful for that, because I never would have made it if I’d had to go to the SaskTel store on top of everything else.

As it was, I still very nearly didn’t make it.

Ultimately I loaded fifteen boxes and suitcases, the vacuum cleaner and various odds and ends into the rented car—filling  nearly1714 every single square inch of space to the point where I could see very little road behind me because of all the luggage jammed against both rear windows and nearly up to to the interior roof light. My seat was so close to the steering wheel–allowing a suitcase to be jammed between the back of the front seat and the front of the back seat–that I could barely move my feet around enough to hit the gas and brake.

My first stop after leaving the apartment (forever, although I didn’t have time to absorb that information then) was the Greyhound station, where I addressed thirteen of the boxes and bags to myself in Edmonton, handed over $145, and breathed my first real sigh of relief.

The next stop was the storage unit in Saskatoon, where I left the vacuum cleaner, the pail (I brought the damp and dirty rags with me to Edmonton to wash) and a couple of boxes of things I’d neglected to send with the movers.

Next I drove to a gas station and filled up the rented car with gas. Then I drove the car to the airport, handed the keys to the staff at the Enterprise desk, took my suitcases to the WestJet counter, and picked up a boarding pass. I got myself and my backpack through security (fortunately, unlike on one previous trip, I’d remembered to pack the box cutter somewhere besides in my carry-on luggage), and walked up the stairs to the appointed gate–where my plane had already started boarding. I walked directly onto the plane, and sat down in my seat. For the next hour I simply marveled at the fact that I was on the plane.

I am looking forward to a similar time for reflection after I board the plane for Toronto on Saturday: I have barely had time to think about being a non-Saskatchewanian since I left that province two weeks ago, much less to consider that my adventure in Toronto is about to begin in earnest.

But it is!

1 Comment

Posted in During the move

Tagged , , , , ,

A break in a lifetime of box-collection blues

Posted on September 13, 2009 | 2 comments

Post #5

I had a great experience yesterday. After procrastinating for hours and hours on Friday, for reasons I shall explain below, at about 10 a.m. on Saturday morning I screwed up my courage and went into the Saskatchewan Liquor Store at 8th St. near Circle Drive and asked one of the cashiers if she had any boxes I could use for my upcoming move. Liquor-store boxes are definitely the best kind of boxes for moving books, of which I have too many, and often for dishes and other things as well: a box that is sturdy enough to hold 8 to 12 bottles of wine or alcohol and small enough that you can still lift it when it is full is a perfect size for many things.

The cashier asked me how many boxes I wanted. I was hoping I might get at least five, and maybe six, but I told her I’d love to have as many as I could get in my car, or as many as they could spare. She told me to drive around to the back of the store and they would see what they could do.

When I arrived at the shipping door out back, a man was waiting there for me with about four good solid boxes. He asked if I was moving, and I said I was. He said, “I’ll give you the bigger ones then.” He proceeded to choose excellent packing boxes for me, and I kept putting them into the vehicle I’d rented until it was full. When I drove away, I was one happy camper.

This whole experience was a huge contrast to my box-collection efforts during previous moves. In Edmonton, there often seemed to be a regulation about how many boxes one person could take from a liquor store—do not ask me why. I generally was permitted about five, and had to go to another liquor store to get five more, and another for five more, etc.

In addition to setting limits, liquor-store employees seemed to greet requests for boxes with expressions of condescension if not actual rudeness. Again I cannot explain this. Perhaps the cashiers felt that a more dignified person would get her boxes from a more dignified place than a liquor store: perhaps, for example, a truly civilized person would buy boxes at a box store. (Are there box stores? I have no idea. But if there are, I’m sure they charge good money for the boxes, which seems ridiculous. Boxes are essentially wrappers for other products. They ought to be recycled.) Perhaps the liquor-store employees felt that moving itself was an undignified activity. Or perhaps they felt inconvenienced by the request – although I’m not sure why they would, as it is customary for the box-collector to be the one who does all the carrying in these situations. (I never had this problem when I wanted FULL boxes of liquor, by the way, only empty ones.)

After experiencing this negative reception several times, I reached a point where I found it difficult to walk into a liquor store and ask for boxes: I knew that the response would be preceded by a deep sigh and delivered in a tone that might be appropriate if the employee had needed to tell me exactly the same thing every single day for weeks: “We only have boxes on Wednesdays. They are left out back of the store in the lane,” or “The empty boxes are over there.  You are welcome to have four.”

In Alberta, rather than face indignity, I sometimes tried going to grocery stores instead. But grocery-store boxes are often flimsy and many have holes in them to allow the fruits and vegetables that originally came in them to breathe. Banana boxes just don’t make it when you are trying to pack a house. I could think of no other kinds of stores that would have boxes in the numbers and dimensions that I needed. (I have recently discovered that some moving companies will provide boxes that are sturdy and a good size, but they generally charge for them and/or require you to return them. As many of my boxes are going to be in storage for a while and then end up in Toronto, returning them–at least this time– is not an option.) So, tail between my legs, I’d go back to begging from liquor stores.

During one horrifically complex move in Alberta, I decided that what I needed to do was to save all the boxes from one move so I would have them for the next move. You need a whole lot of extra space to be able to pull this off, but I was determined. I folded all the boxes flat after I’d unpacked them, and I put them all away. Several months later I had another good idea—which was to lend my boxes to other people who were moving. Unfortunately, the first person to whom I lent my cache threw them into her back yard as she emptied them, where they were all turned to mush by an out-of-season snow storm.

So for one reason and another, mainly involving not having enough space to store boxes where I am now, I’m back again to collecting from scratch. And so far this time it is going unexpectedly well. But if it seemed to the kind folks at the 8th St. liquor store in Saskatoon that I was a bit over the top in my gratitude yesterday… well, I did have my reasons.

2 Comments

Posted in Before the move

Tagged ,

In which my mind wanders to security deposits and the securing of boxes

Posted on September 9, 2009 | 3 comments

Post #4

Yesterday I worried about my security deposit. (For those of you who haven’t rented since the 1970s and are not landlords yourselves, this used to be called the “damage deposit.”)

I’ve caused no wear and tear to my current apartment that could be described as anything but “normal,” and I’ve always got my security deposits back in full from places I’ve rented in the past (although I’ve also always worried about whether I would or not). But in this case, something happened between the time I signed the first lease and when I signed the second: the ownership of the building changed, and the new owners decided that they didn’t want people putting nails in walls to hang their pictures on, and they didn’t want people putting adhesive things on the walls to hang their pictures from. This seems to be a trend of some sort, as a correspondent from Toronto who is a renter mentioned the other day that they aren’t allowed to hang pictures on their walls.

This floors me. (Walls me?) I have no idea how you can possibly consider any dwelling a home if you can’t hang pictures. Those hanging on my walls now include some that have been in the rooms where I’ve lived since childhood, others that were gifts, a few that I purchased myself. All are as vested with memories as are any of the books on my shelves. I can’t imagine what I’ll do if the place in Toronto has a similar restriction — but the penalty for contravention is hefty. It involves paying to repaint the entire apartment at a cost that is is even greater than the amount of the damage deposit–which is almost a full month’s rent.

Before I signed the second lease, I pointed out that since i had moved in under the previous lease and therefore had already put lots of holes in the walls so I could hang my pictures, I could not comply with the new clause in the new lease. I crossed it out. I initialled it. Yesterday I noticed that despite a verbal agreement to do so, the landlord’s agent did not initial that clause before mailing me my copy. Hence the worry. Since I’m already at odds with the landlord’s agent because my air conditioner hasn’t worked all summer, and am requesting a discount on my October rent as a result, I am a bit tentative about raising another issue before the first one has been decided. But I guess I’ll need to follow up on that.

On a more constructive note, yesterday I booked a rental car for one day this weekend so I can start accumulating boxes and do a few other errands in preparation for The Pack.

3 Comments

Posted in Before the move

Tagged , , ,