Moved...again!

This same day last week saw me packing up a 15' U-Haul truck and cleaning my old place.

The plan was to be at my new place by 7pm. That did not happen.

No, instead I was still packing the truck at that time.

One, I still have more stuff than I realized.

Two, my former neighbours were complete assholes.

While the first point is something I'm working on, the second is no longer my problem. Thank fuck for small miracles.

I ended up at my new place at around 8:30am the following day. Thank goodness it was a holiday here in Canada, because there is no way I would have been able to get everything moved in by myself. At least not in time to get the truck back by 10:30am. My new landlady and her son helped get everything off of the truck in time for me to get the truck back on time. It was supposed to be back no later than 7:45am, but considering I'd left my old place at that time, it wasn't going to happen. Such is life.

This past Friday saw me, with the help of a friend, finally get all my stuff down into the basement where my bedroom is.

Yes, I'm renting a room but I have access to a full bathroom and laundry room. Internet and other utilities are included. My cat is with my daughter, and my kiddo was driven crazy enough by my cat going into heat that she's paying to get my cat fixed finally. I would have preferred to have it done years ago when I first got the cat, but the folks who volunteered to cover her spay disappeared into the wind. Such is life.

I do miss my cat, but the resident cat at my new place has been visiting me down in my room on occasion. He's a gorgeous black kitty who basically owns the place, and I wouldn't dream of not letting him into my room.

Speaking of my room...right now it's very cluttered. It probably wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have pretty much all my remaining furniture stuffed in there. I have my chaise lounge in the room right now due to lack of anywhere else to put it. It may end up going back to the friend I bought it from, as promised should I not have space for it at some point. That reminds me, I need to reach out to her about that.

I need to remember to ask my landlady about any rules she may have concerning putting stuff up on the walls. Can I use nails? Or do I have to find an alternative way to hang pictures? Can I put up a couple of shelves? I suppose I'll find out soon enough.

My bed is high enough off of the floor to be able to put bins and milk crates under it. That will help with a good chunk of the clutter. And I have a lot of things in smaller bins that I can put into one of my bookcases. So far, one bookcase has all my remaining books, and the other is holding mainly storage bins. In the move, one of the bookcases had its backing destroyed, but it still works to hold stuff.

I still have all of my cloth bins, and I may end up using them in the one bookcase to help organize/store several things that I want to keep close at hand.

I also still have my coffee table and end tables, even though I really don't need them. Considering that I'd left my old kitchen table set at my old place, I didn't think it was appropriate to leave even more furniture behind. And they are not worth a whole lot, but might be useful for somebody who has nothing. I just have to get everything cleared off so I can take pictures and post the items online.

I discovered that my steamer trunk has developed rust on the outside of it. The plan is to refinish it as best as I can. A couple cans of black spray paint and a can of silver for the trim and straps, and it should be good to go to be used as a nightstand. I had gotten it with the intention of refinishing it anyway...better late than never, I suppose.

Perhaps I can paint my dresser at the same time I paint my steamer trunk. Especially because I'm planning on using the same colours on both items. But that will have to wait until I have more of my stuff organized and put away.

Hopefully I can get access to the basement bar soon so I can put away my kitchen stuff. And set up my Keurig and toaster oven. Right now there's some old furniture in the way, including a couple of old mattresses that the landlady is trying to figure out what to do with. If it were up to me, all that stuff would be taken to the dump. Free up that much needed space, damn it! But it's not my call, so I just have to work around it for now.

I have to say, though, that I really like where I'm at now. It's close to pretty much everything. Multiple buses, several restaurants, a mall, and a grocery store. All within walking distance. I know that in my old apartment that it wasn't close to most things, but at least there were two bus stops within easy walking distance that ran more than once every hour or so. Now, I live a five-minute walk from a transit hub and have the choice of several buses. My last place saw entirely too much time spent commuting, especially if my buses did not conveniently meet up at the transit hub. There's nothing quite like being off work and exhausted, but having an hour wait for my next bus before I could go home. It sucked so bad. Now? One bus from work and I can either walk up to my place through the mall's parking lot, or hop on a different bus to get off a couple of stops later so I have less of a walk ahead of me.

My fingers are crossed that this arrangement lasts longer than my most recent living situation. I really hate moving at the best of times. Seven months at my last place after 12 years in the place previous. At least I don't have to worry about a roommate deciding that she wants to live with her best friend and instead of being honest with me, lying and telling me that she's leaving for a different province at the end of the month.

That last bit I found out on my last day at my old place. And only because I helped my former roomie move the last of her stuff from the apartment to her new place. Yeah, she tried to lie her way out of it, saying that it's only temporary blah blah blah, that her best friend would not have had to pay a huge amount of rent once she left, blah blah blah. Considering that her story kept changing even before she effectively moved out, yeah. But I guess karma kicked her in the ass because her best friend ended up dying not even two weeks after they moved in together. It's shitty, don't get me wrong, and I wish the friend was still alive, but it's what it is, I guess. Not much getting around that.

Either way, I'm in a new place that is closer to everything and much more convenient in so many ways. Sure, it's not an entire apartment to myself, but that's okay. In this day and age, it's likely to become much more rare to be able to afford a single person/family dwelling on one person's pay. Especially when that pay isn't much above minimum wage!

Such is life though. In the meantime, I should be doing work of some sort. Not that I want to. And not that I have much more I can actually do until tomorrow. Perhaps I'll call it a day early and head home to putter a bit while I still have some energy left!