When we decided to make the move to Victoria, it quickly became apparent that it would be unreasonably expensive to move any of our large belongings out with us. On the bright side, this meant that there was no need to despair over which furniture to keep and which to jettison - we could just collectively morn the loss of our furniture in general. Considering this was the result of a choice we had made of our own free will and that more furniture was on the horizon, we did our best to get over it and move onto the decidedly more difficult task at hand - what to purge of the assortment of personal belongings the two of us had amassed over a total duration of 60+ years.
Top 10 casualties of the big purge:
1. The Vasque hiking boots Baasje purchased on the day we met (I was covering for the cashier on her lunch break)
2. The anvil*
3. My Monsterland upright video arcade game
4. The remainder of my vinyl collection
5. Most of my comics and graphic novels
6. Most of Baasje's wood working tools
7. Our large cast iron frying pan with an awesome finish that took over 10 years to build up
8. My Gamecube and games, most notably my copy of Zelda, Ocarina of Time
9. The awesome oak bookcase we bought for $10 at the auction held when they cleared out the old downtown branch of London Libraries
10. The heavy oak antique science lab table we got for $20 when they cleared out the staging building at Western
*Technically the anvil isn't exactly a casualty of the purge as we've stored it at my parents house, so there is a chance it might one day make the move if we ever see fit to pay to ship 80lbs of iron out here. We shall see.
Through a little blood, sweat and tears, we managed to pare everything down to about 10 boxes (of the storage bin 'Rubbermaid' variety):
3 boxes - clothes, outerwear and shoes
2 boxes - kitchen stuff
1.5 boxes - books, DVDs and CDs (transferred to a 400 disk capacity binder), and videocassettes
1 box - office supplies, necessary paper records and photographs
1 box - electronics (1 DVD player, 1 VCR, 1 small stereo, 1 printer)
1 box - camping kit
0.5 boxes - miscellaneous tchatchkis
Thanks to a deal we got through a family member we were able to Fed-Ex all 10 boxes out to Victoria for a little under $1 a pound which amounted to a little less than $500. In addition to these 10 boxes, Baasje drove our compact hatchback out here loaded with our artwork, guitars and the two small pieces of furniture we decided to keep - a sheepskin lamp we purchased in Montreal during the 2006 Jazz Fest and a one of a kind little end table built by our good friend, 2 Dollar Bill.
Selling off the rest of our furniture piece by piece was a bit of a dog and pony show ('So-and-so wants to buy our sofa...we sold it already, right?' and 'You said we'd sell the barbeque for what price?') The process culminated in a drop-in and pick-up your ‘new’ furniture open house complete with a 'plant with every purchase' throw-in and a daycare service that saw our house overrun with pre-schoolers as their parents transported furniture in multiple trips across the city in pick-up trucks. When all was said and done we made enough money to mostly cover the cost of the new furniture we purchased from IKEA** when we moved into the apartment in Victoria. Though the quality isn't quite what we'd had before, the new pieces are far more suitable in their compactness. As an alternative to purchasing from IKEA we briefly considered buying all our furniture off of usedvictoria.com - an excellent site with some undeniable great deals - but with all the hoopla we'd been through liquidating our belongings piece-by-piece, we really weren't keen on turning around and doing the whole thing in reverse.
**The IKEA bus departs twice monthly from the bus station in downtown Victoria headed to the Richmond IKEA on the mainland via the Swartz Bay - Tswwassen ferry. The cost of the return trip is $40, but if you spend $250 you get a $40 coupon to use towards your purchase. IKEA throws in a raffle draw and a 15% discount in the restaurant. I don't know about you, but I've never walked into an IKEA and not spent at least $40. That said, why go any other way?
When all was said and done we had spent about $1000 to move us and 'all' our belongings across the country. The breakdown of our expenses/income ended up as follows:
New furniture costs = A little bit less than the money raised by selling old furniture
Shipping costs = $500.
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