Moving the majority of Kitty and Paul Antonik Wakfer's possessions from the Toronto apartment (reasons given previously) was done over the entire month of May; items not needed made the trip earlier, in the last week of April. Since the vast majority of our furniture could either fit directly into our Subaru WRX Wagon or could be disassembled to do so, all but the largest or most awkward was transported that way. We needed to make frequent trips to work on the cottage, so filling the car with our possessions just made sense. Our plans were to rent a step van for the remaining items and move them in a single round trip (returning with the largest of furniture to be disposed of at GoodWill) in the last week of May.
It's only the first day of May but the Toronto apartment is already getting that "moving" look about it. Each of our computer work spaces have already lost their over-desk hutches, which would not be used at the cottage where the desks would face each other (as they do in Arizona, which we decided we like best) rather than the wall. Many of the lesser used reference books at this point were in boxes and already at the cottage, some to be taken to Arizona. We had purchased a hand truck to facilitate the moving of heavy items both to the car for the earlier trips and to the van at the time of the major move.
Kitty caught Paul in contemplation over the remaining wood shelves and books along the living room wall (seen in prior photo) - the decision had been made earlier that the shelves themselves would go to Arizona for use in our office. There was other sufficient shelf space for the books that would stay at the cottage.
MoreLife and SelfSIP work goes on between time spent on moving chores. In this pic though, Paul is actually taking some time out to play Spider that only resides on Kitty's computer (since it appears to not run under Windows 98); his computer can be seen in the background.
Kitty took this photo to record Paul's stupendous job of packing the WRX Wagon. This particular trip was a quickie round trip without her since a (clean) garbage can stuffed with items occupied the front passenger seat and all other space was also filled. This same optimal packing job was done each time we drove from the apartment to the cottage.
Paul had the rental step-in van at the apartment at 9:00am on Wednesday May 25, right as morning rush hour traffic started to slow on Spadina Rd., although he parked it in a space in front off the road itself. The floor space humps over the wheel wells were not something we had been aware of (our failure to actually look inside the van when arranging rental), and therefore Paul had to do some last minute alteration in his plans for filling the van.
At this point Paul already had done a fair amount of packing into the van, as can be seen. The long items that we had earlier disassembled (shelves, tables, one desk, bed platform, wardrobes, etc.) were placed on the floor with the larger items alongside and on top. Way to the front are two dressers and large plastic storage containers (filled with clothes) that had been kept under our waterbed. Our leather loveseat can be seen atop many flat pieces and Kitty's desk on its side to the right. Numerous other odd pieces have been tucked into whatever crannies developed due to the non-straight walls.
Paul adjusts a number of small flat items to fill in the space on the larger pieces to make an even surface for more bigger items. The sofa actually got taken out and put back in between shots so that the flat items were arranged to Paul's liking.
***The disassembled thick flat pieces making up the surface and legs of a table were placed into leg and under drawer space of Kitty's desk not yet already completely filled with smaller items.
About this time the loveseat looked real inviting - and Paul took a few minutes to just relax.
Paul and Kitty take a break for a meal in a pretty bare apartment.
The large leather chair was one of the last items to be fit into the van. Kitty didn't even take any pictures during the tricky procedure getting the chair ontop of the TV, which did turn out alright in the end. At the time it was a much less than pleasant activity and both Kitty and Paul were very glad when they were finally ready to start out for the cottage after the evening commuter traffic died down.
When we got to the cottage - sometime in the wee hours and after stopping to pick up a treat of coffee and a great Morning Glory muffin at Coffee Time about halfway on the trip - we just collapsed into bed. It was early the next afternoon, after a good breakfast, that we got started on the unloading.
First thing was to get the van backed right up close to the back porch. Having already eliminated the stump (see previous photo page) and temporarily removed the porch railing, the Paul maneuvered the van right into place. It can be seen that the contents of the van filled it right up, though Paul insisted that there was still some empty space here and there that he should have taken the time to fill.
May is big time blackfly weather in Ontario cottage country. The only way to do outside work at that time without being bitten is to wear a fine net jacket with long sleeves and head covering. Paul donned his, grumbling that it was terrible to work in, and unloaded the van as Kitty readied the door for quick open and close. We wanted to avoid getting a bunch of those critters - along with the numerous mosquitoes - in the house.
This big dresser was the very first items into the van (on its side) and therefore the last item out. After taking it off the hand truck, Paul finds a place for it in the already pretty full living room.
Happiness is an empty van! It took just under 3.5 hours to empty the van, making use of the planned storage places in the living room and north bedroom. That was considerably less time than the almost 12 hours to completely pack it.
Later that night (Thursday) we drove back to Toronto with a mostly empty van that contained only the few remaining large bulky items we did not want to keep at the cottage but had decided to leave at GoodWill. In the early hours of Friday we returned the rental van and picked up our own car. We slept at the apartment on old mattresses that we had brought back earlier from the cottage and then awoke Friday late morning to clean out the very last. We had originally thought we could fit all the remaining items into the car and that this Friday trip would be our last. Unfortunately we estimated wrong and one final trip was taken on Sunday May 29, thus bringing an end to Paul's Toronto era, where he had lived almost continuously since starting to university in 1955.
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