Less Car, More Life

Took a break from packing, it was lovely.

When your home looks like this, maybe it’s time for a break?

Before we made our long discussed but quickly implemented decision to sell our flat we had booked a trip to Chicago to see friends and family. Not great planning, we thought at first, but it turned out to be a perfect break from sorting, packing, and purging. It also allowed some painting work to happen while we were gone, which was nice.

Train and bus from O’Hare airport to Ravenswood neighborhood.

Friends! We’re lucky to have fun and wonderful friends who kept us busy and kept our minds off what waited at home. More packing.

We discovered that it is indeed a thong the whale is wearing on his head, but never discovered why?

Places where you never need a car to go out and have fun are high on our list of what makes a trip relaxing and successful. The Blue Line to the 81 bus got us from O’Hare airport to our friends. Our feet carried us out to dinner in Andersonville. And so it continued, walking, busses, the L, and eventually Metra to get out to visit family. The only car trips were in the suburbs with family to dinner, our hotel, and getting dropped off at the airport.

Waiting for the bus on a rainy Sunday morning.

That underwear on head whale makes a mean pizza.

To get to visit family in the suburbs we needed to take Metra downtown and then switch stations to go out. There is always the challenge of what to do with your luggage while trying to enjoy a day in the city. There is no left luggage in the train stations unless you are a ticketed Amtrak passenger, but thankfully there’s now an app for this. Vertoe lets you find a local business, book and pay on line, $6.00 per bag, to leave your bag.

Tags through your zipper for reassurance and tracking. Nice shot of my new Ecco sandals!

Our bags relaxed at a shoe repair shop while we walked around downtown Chicago and had lunch. It was a great solution to that age old traveler problem – what to do with your bags while you sightsee. Thank you Vertoe!

Make room for awesome.

The posters at our storage facility are giving us advice as we move the first load in to our new space.

Selling and moving is a lot of work. It’s exhausting and exhilarating, and in an hour moods can range between joy and snappish cranky. We are doing what we can to make our lives easy, not much cooking since our kitchen is in a state of disarray for cabinet painting.

The auxiliary kitchen. Everything from the lower cabinets is in the bike room.

We keep reminding ourselves how good it is to cull your stuff – so much to GoodWill already! We’ve been in our lovely flat ten years. That’s a good long time to accumulate stuff. So now, we cull, save what we love, send the rest out for others to use.

Making room for awesome. As advised.

The signage game at this storage facility is strong.

The packing challenge begins.

July 3, 2021 If you catch a glimpse of us this week, the slightly panicked looks on our faces is because we’ve decided to sell our flat before we leave to go traveling. And we are just now remembering how much work it is to sell. Lots to get done but we’re up to the challenge.

We fly to Europe on August 13th. (Hopefully.) All our stuff, minus that we purge, will be in storage, and when we come back to SF we’ll plan on finding a rental. We love this City but the world is calling and we must go…

Getting ready to travel.

Like many people, the pandemic made us reconsider our lives. Pre-pandemic we were ready to rent out our SF flat and travel, knowing we would have a place in San Francisco to eventually come home to. Now, we have decided to sell our flat and be unemcumbered as we travel. We did this in 2006, so it’s familiar to us. The packing, the purging, the considering every object’s worth and emotional weight.

We spent a month traveling in Colorado with a rental car and camping gear. That helped us realize how much we love traveling lite, and traveling without a car.

So, here we go. House free, car free travel.