savining the apartment, one dog hair at a time
This has to have been along the lines of “fastest” or “best” or “most organized” move I have ever participated in. There were so many things that could have gone wrong, and really nothing did go wrong.
First an angry word at the insane person who came up with these July 1 lease expiration deals. What were you thinking?? It’s really cruel, you know, to make all these people stress like ths, move at 11 PM or 5 AM and pay $200 for a moving truck for 5 hours and have so many people end up with nowhere to move to!
We woke up at 5:00 and packed up the last bits of stuff we had out and prepared breakfast which consisted of the best croissants in town, nutella, raisin bread and olive bread, apples, bananas, oranges, pears and papaya and three kinds of juice including the odd but tasty pomegranite blueberry (it sounds to me like something Fred Flintstone would drink). By 5:40 Dave and Sanan arrived and I went with them to the truck rental place. I was worried there would be a long line-up but when we got there, only one person was being helped and we had the truck back to the apartment by 6:20. BTW, if anyone ever needs to rent a car or truck I highly recommend the company we used (Discount) since the truck was in very good shape, the people were nice, and they ran their company very well.
While we were gone, Dan started bringing boxes down to the main floor of the apartment building. By the time we arrived, he had moved half the boxes himself and was sweathing profusely! Sanan, Dan and I started loading the truck (Dave just had surgery so he guarded the truck) and Dan labelled our disposable glasses with zany names like “Dash Gordon” for himself and “Mr. Bus Driver” for Dave, who drove the truck. Just after 7 our army arrived. Dave and Chriszine, who I didn’t know were coming, rode their bikes over to help and then Janice picked up Claudia, Joseph, Paul, Valérie, Stefi, Julien and Andrea at the metro. Things started happening really fast and in no time we had the truck full. All our stuff fit (just) except for out two bikes and our way-past-its-due-date foam mattress. We left the mattress as a sacrifice to the moving day mojo and Joseph and Valérie kindly rode them with Dave and Chriszine to the new place and the rest of us were able to squeeze in Sanan’s car. I saw our neighbour just as I was leaving and he looked quite cross - undoubtedly we made a racket.
When we arrived at the new place, the truck was in the process of being unloaded and Ken and Joel came to help. But there was one minor problem - nobody was there to give us the keys! I phoned the landlord’s cell phone and left a panicky message and in the meantime Paul was able to get us into the building by buzzing another apartment. We started taking boxes upstairs and found there was no room in the hallway to stack them. Dan had the intelligence to try the doorhandle (something I wouldn’t have thought to try) and lo and behold, it was unlocked! The keys were on the kitchen counter and we were in!
Our army made a chain and got everything into the new apartment in 20 minutes. It was incredible! We even had time to drive to Lisa’s place and pick up her mattress (she’s selling her bed due to the cross-country move) and return the truck by just after 10. The only drawback was that we finished so soon, the pizza delivery was still 2 hours away! Paul and Ken walked around and tried to find moving day furniture being thrown out, but didn’t have any luck. They came back and we ate the pizza and chilled a bit. Everyone else elected to go, either to watch the soccer game, work or to crash.
Little did we know the work was just beginning. The previous tenants were really nice (I met one and spoke with both of them on the phone) but probably not into cleaning much. They had a lovely large black dog who left his fur everywhere and we think he may have peed on the floor too. We started by cleaning the bedroom and by cleaning I don’t mean just vacuuming, but scrubbing the baseboards, electrical outlets, radiators and lightswitches, vacuuming, mopping twice and then wiping dry with a cloth. This procedure was repeated for the kitchen (extra work there because of all the cupboards), entrance and living room. I don’t think my fingertips have hurt so much, ever. Oh and then there was the fridge. It’s an old school frost-up freezer type that had 4 inches of frost on each side. There was so much frost that the freezer door broke off (we found it in a cupboard) and there was a substantial cache of food frozen into it. We defrosted the fridge the second day and found four pizza pocket things, a bag of unidentified berries, breaded fish, and a container of spaghetti sauce! This was also a good opportunity to clean the fridge which was dirty and smelled funky. Dan found an ingenious way to fix the door. It was held in place by a spring and two hinges, one of which had broken. The hinges attached to a bracket which was screwed into the side of the fridge, so Dan took the bracket out, screwed another screw into the broken spot to replace the hinge and then put the bracket back in place. It worked great! So we went from something that looked like a horror story to something clean and functional.
We’ve managed to put up curtains in two rooms and have bought rods for the other two. We need to get some misc items still like a towel rack (what is it with Montreal apartments and having nowhere for you to hang towels?) and a little stand in the kitchen to go under the overhanging cupoard which we keep hitting our heads on.
So a big thank you to everyone who helped out. We are so grateful for everything you did!