Monday 18 April 2011

Home, Home on the Range...

I've never been good at making large commitments...especially financial ones.  Other then marrying Juls (which was surprisingly easy) the largest commitment I have made has been to buy a used 2000 Ford Taurus for $3500.

                                         What Can I Say...I Liked the Financing Options...

It follows from this that I have never been able to commit to any sort of permanent, or even semi-permanent housing.  In fact, one day as a joke Juls and I decided to list all the places we had lived since leaving our respective family homes.  My list looked something like this;

1. 2001 - Bachelor Pad in Halifax
2. 2002 - Shared apartment with Andrew and Chris in Halifax
3. 2003 - Same apartment, different roommate. Andrew and Tim in Halifax
4. 2004 - Apartment with Keegan in Halifax
5. 2006 - Brief stint as a nomad in an apartment with Sascha in Halifax
6. 2007 - 1st place in Calgary, basement apartment with Juls
7. 2008 - Upstairs of same house with Juls
8. 2008 (4 months later...thanks Tamara...jerk) - 2 bedroom apartment...I feel no more need to imply these were all with Juls...
9. 2009 - Moved in December, into a 450 (if that) square foot bachelor....smart...yeah right...
10. 2011 - Last apartment in Calgary.  a huge 2 bedroom that was awesome and that we also were in for about 2 weeks before we found out we were being ex patted...

I won't bother even trying to list Juls places, but rest assured, hers are actually even more numerous (I believe her count is 14). Now, on the eve of our trip to France for what looks like at least 3 years, I would say it is a safe bet that we will be adding to those lists...and still none will be anything we own. 

It has recently been revealed to me that Juls and I cannot be A-typical.  This became painfully apparent when the Total hired moving company entered our apartment to pack the things to send to Paris and asked us whether we had any antiques or valuables worth more than $10,000.  While trying to think of anything that would even come close to that, the only answer I could come up with was my Playstation...value...about $300 new.

I'm getting on a bit of a tangent here, but what I am really trying to point out is that we are not really people to get attached to anything...Juls has actually called me the opposite of a hoarder.  So, when it comes time for us to deal with our housing and belongings in Canada, there was not really that much to deal with.  That being said, it somehow was still a ridiculously large amount of work.  Because of our constant moving and purging we really had an IKEA home with a few personal artsy touches (entirely provided by Juls), so when it came time to decide what we wanted to keep and what we were selling or getting rid of, my vote was almost unanimously "get rid of it".  Juls had a bit more reservation toward getting rid of everything, and so eventually we met in the middle, and got rid of about 2/3 of our worldly belongings.

When all was said and done we really only shipped clothes, a few electronics (the Playstation mentioned earlier), our multimedia collection, photos and paintings and our marital bed...yep, we shipped a bed to France. 

It's actually a pretty funny story that explains why we would ship a bed. Total furnishes our Paris home, but will only furnish to what our "family status" allots us.  Being married with no children meant that Juls and I were entitled to a 1 bedroom apartment worth of furniture.  We decided that we wanted a 2 bedroom (better for guests) and so, we paid an extra couple of hundred Euro/month to make it happen.  Here's where it gets wonky.  Total would not pay to purchase a bed for that second bedroom, however, they would pay to ship our bed to France...When the movers came to ship our stuff they saw the bed and seemed taken aback.  We wondered if shipping a bed was unusual and they quickly told us it was not only that, but also ridiculously expensive.  In fact, the cost to ship our $800 bed to Paris turned out to be about $5000!  Ahhh logic, isn't it great.

Anyway, with everything shipped we only needed to get out of our lease.  This was a bit harder than we had hoped.  We informed our landlady about 3 months early that we were shipping out and she began to search for either a new renter, or a purchaser for her unit.  Unfortunately, being non-committal to whether she was going to sell or rent, meant that neither happened in time and we had to eventually pay our way out of our lease.  The saving grace was that Total would cover this, but the stress of wondering what was going to happen was enough to drive us to temporary insanity while we were trying to deal with the move.

Eventually, with the help of hired movers and hired maids (which were awesome), we did get rid of everything we had and were free and clear to make our exit.  A few of the many things to deal with were, well...dealt with.

Now if we could only figure out how to deal with our money over there...

2 comments:

Juls in Paris said...

True on all counts. The $5000 bed shipping fees still get me every time. So who's coming to sleep in our $5000 bed?

Riles said...

ha! I actually never did realize that Total would pay 5K to ship the bed but not 1k or less to buy a bed in France.. I'll come sleep in the bed!