Downsizing the Family Homestead Pt 3

Trying to downsize a multi-generational home can be somewhat daunting! I broke the process down into steps and tried to manage the process!

Part 3 – How I Downsized the Family Homestead

Would you like to start at Part 1

Once I made the decision to actually put the property on the market and move to Florida, I needed to organize and prioritize the many steps involved in the project in addition to managing all the things that went along with owning the pizzeria.  Thankfully, my manager Tara took care of a lot of the day-to-day operations.  She was indispensable!

Tasks Completed in January 2019

I spent a lot of time trying to organize things.  I had so many To Do lists, my lists had lists!  I tried to go through the project as logically as I could.  One of the first things I did in was to take the boxes of “fancy” things to the auction house in Blue Mound, IL.  I called them “fancy” because it was primarily China, crystal and Christmas dishes. I think it was 30 boxes and the load completely filled my Town and Country van.

In order to clear more things out of the houses, Dave and I started boxing up the items we knew we would want for our Florida life.  This process caused more than a little strife and anxiety!  Dave is not sentimental at all.  He kept telling me we didn’t need whatever it was I was trying to pack up.  And he constantly reminded me how much smaller the Florida house was than the farmhouse.  One of his favorite phrases was “You aren’t going to junk up the Florida house!”  I pretended like I didn’t know what he meant by that!

Even though the Florida house was smaller, and my Great Aunt had left several pieces of furniture in the house (2 sofas, a loveseat, a complete bedroom set and a couple of leather recliners) I had certain pieces that were family pieces, and I wanted to take them to Florida.  I also was rather fond of my everyday dishes and my good China.  Although we didn’t entertain often in Illinois because of my work schedule, I just knew we would be entertaining a lot more in Florida!!!

Tasks we completed in February

Dave and I decided that we should go ahead and arrange for a moving truck or pod to take the furniture pieces and as many boxes of “stuff” that were ready.

I researched the various options.  We had ruled out renting another U Haul because of the time it took to drive down to Florida and back as well as a U Haul was simply that:  U load it and U unload it!  I found what I thought was a great deal online and arranged for pick up to be on February 19th, 2019.  They would deliver our things in Florida on Mar 6th.  We planned to be down there for 5 days.  We had gone down in January 2019 for a long weekend and measured how much space we still had.   So, I knew the furniture items that we were taking would fit.  We decided to send 9 pieces of furniture and 60 boxes on this load.

The above piece is my Great Grandmother’s China cabinet.  It has a glass door that we took off and wrapped separately for the move.  My Mom had inherited this China cabinet from her grandmother.  My Dad refinished it in the mid 1960s.  The picture on the wall is of my Dad when he was a baby.

In addition to this piece, we took Dave’s Grandfather’s mahogany secretary that Dave has used as his desk for years.  We also took a cabinet that had solid doors and we planned to use that as our stereo cabinet.  My Dad had drilled holes in it for the wires a number of years ago.  It was a sentimental piece versus being a family piece.  It was the last piece of furniture that I had bought with my best friend on what turned out to be our last outing.  He passed away unexpectedly at age 33.

We also sent down a corner cabinet that had been in the farmhouse when my parents moved in in 1949.  When I was growing up, I thought it was actually built in, but it turned out it wasn’t.  They took it to the modular house when they moved and my Mom then had two matching corner cabinets made for the dining room in the farmhouse. It took quite a while to get the wallpaper accent off the doors.  My Mom had a “thing” for wallpaper and contact paper!!

My cousin, Gary, also inherited the collector gene.  He is always looking for cool things.  He found a cabinet online in Indiana that he thought I would like.  I picked it up from him in early October 2018.  It was perfect for my office and would hold a lot of items.  We had the movers pack it up.  It is actually a two-piece cabinet.  I need to put a new beadboard back on it but haven’t done that as yet.  The picture below is of the cabinet in my office at the Florida house.

The way the moving process was originally explained to us was that the movers would pick our items up and load them into a specific part of the semi.  They would pick up other loads for people that were also moving to Florida.  The items would then be taken to Miami, Florida and stored in a warehouse there until early March when they were to deliver them to us in Punta Gorda, Fl.  The day of the pickup at the farm in Illinois went smoothly. The guys showed up on time.  They wrapped things carefully and loaded everything up that they were supposed to.  I was feeling really positive about the experience.

March – Its almost Spring!

Fast forward to March.  The movers did not show up on the 5th as previously arranged.  After repeated calls to the moving company, they finally showed up on the 6th.  Of the 9 pieces of furniture that we sent down; they had damaged 4 of the pieces.  One piece was completely unusable as they had damaged the doors so badly that we couldn’t even open them.  The other 3 pieces were still able to be used but had damage.  Someone had decided that it would be smart to pick up my Great Grandmother’s China cabinet by the top decorative spindles.

The corner cabinet had holes kicked in the sides, I guess from when they were trying to adjust it on the dolly.  I was able to eventually fix the holes or at least cover them up with creative use of cardboard and contact paper.

Dave’s Grandfather’s secretary looked like it had gotten wet.

One of the boxes had evidence of a large rodent that had gnawed a hole into it and tried to make a nest. This happened to be the box where I had packed my Dad’s military flag that I received when he passed away.  Fortunately, the rodent did not damage the flag.   A couple of boxes had clearly been dropped so several pieces of China were broken.  A few boxes showed signs of having gotten wet. The guys that were unloading that day said the items had been stored in a warehouse in Chicago!  I certainly was not expecting my things to be mishandled and stored in a leaky, rodent infested warehouse.

I was furious!  I immediately contacted the company and the broker we went thru.  It was a long, tedious process.  The end result was that because I hadn’t taken out the extra insurance, they paid us on weight.  I received a check for $117.00 about 3 months after the damage was turned in.  They wouldn’t pay anything for the items that were broken since we had packed those ourselves.  We had packed them with bubble wrap and in sturdy boxes.

I was able to buff out most of the damage to Dave’s Grandfather’s secretary.  I managed to put the spindles back together on top of my Great Grandmother’s China cabinet.  After finally getting the corner cabinet painted, I was able to cover up the holes.

Chalk Paint Furniture Ideas ORC Week 6

But the point is that the damage shouldn’t have happened in the first place.

When I first contracted with the company, I was told we would receive “white glove service”.  We clearly did not receive “white glove service”, it was more like “boxing glove service”.

The downsizing process continues here:Thyme to Let Go; How I Downsized the Family Homestead Part 4