Packing Up to Leave Toronto

Over the last couple of weeks, we've been selling all our furniture and appliances in preparation for leaving on another road trip. Selling things in Toronto is accomplished through one of three major channels; Facebook Marketplace, Kijiji, and Craigslist. There's no Trade Me here, and eBay is mainly commercial goods now, so we ended up listing everything on both Facebook and Kijiji.

Dealing with buyers has been such a disappointing experience. So many people asked questions that were answered in the advert ("Is this a single bed?" in reply to our Queen Bed & Mattress listing), and sent a great number of messages that we replied to which never received any follow-up. Everybody is always late, guaranteeably by at least half an hour, and will never send you a message to let you know they're not going to be on time. It's like all common decency is lost.

We tried to sell the couch to a person who was almost two hours late. We'd taken the couch apart and moved it down to the building's loading bay to get it ready for them, and so had to sit down there with the stench from the nearby rubbish bins for hours until they arrived. When they eventually did come one of the guys tried haggling aggressively with Katie (I'd gone upstairs to cook dinner, it was 10 pm by this point), telling her it was in terrible condition and wasn't the colour that we'd advertised. Eventually, she conceded a $5 discount, because it seemed that the guy had only turned up with that much cash.

After this begrudging agreement, they started trying to load it into their car, without much luck. Katie thinks that maybe they could have made it fit by properly thinking through how the pieces could nest together, but instead, they just tried jamming it in through the doors as hard as possible. She asked them to be careful with it, but all she got in response was an angry "What did you say?" Finally, after 10 minutes of pushing and shoving, they decided it wasn't going to fit. Katie gave them their money back, and they drove off without even saying goodbye!

We eventually sold the sofa to a much nicer lady who turned up a few days later with a big rental van and two helpers, and they carried it down to the loading bay for us. This presented another problem, as we'd apparently annoyed the security guard the week before by sitting in the loading bay for so long. As if that was somehow our fault! He was very unhappy about opening the door for us again, asking lots of questions about how long we were going to be, and why couldn't we just use the front door. It was about 9 pm, and he was sitting at the front desk looking at Facebook on his phone, so he was just lazy!

Aside from the drama of selling things, we also needed to store some of the stuff that we'll be taking back to NZ with us but won't need on our upcoming camping trip. Katie found a self-storage place 5 minutes away from us, which billed weekly, which is a rarity in an industry who normally charge monthly with no possibility of refund or pro-rating. We organized a 5-foot by 5-foot locker and moved in a ski-bag and several suitcases full of stuff before locking it up with the padlock we'd used last time we rented a place like this.

There was a pile of things still remaining that we either couldn't sell or couldn't be bothered selling, which we took to the Salvation Army. It ended up being quite a large box full, containing all sorts of things like a lamp, coffee maker, some pillowcases Katie had crocheted, some old clothes and shoes, and more. It was a little frustrating giving away things that we'd paid money for not long ago, but we just told ourselves that we'd already got the value out of them, and now they'd be useful to someone else.

One more thing to be organized was the shipping back to NZ for our excess luggage. We've decided that we want to take our rooftop tent back home with us, but it's far too big and heavy to bring with us on the flight. We've been struggling with finding a freight forwarding company that will respond to us, give us a reasonable quote in plain language, and that we can find reviews of online. It's been hard! Eventually, we settled on one which, while it wasn't the cheapest, had positive reviews from other people who had shipping with them between Canada and New Zealand. All we need to do is shrink-wrap our bags and boxes, and they'll collect them from us! The bags are packed and sitting in our storage container ready to send, so one less thing to worry about before we leave the country.

As we'd sold our bed one day too early, we ended up sleeping our last night on the floor using the mattress from our tent. In order to get the mattress out of the tent, we had to mount it to the car, which meant we'd need to park it on the road for the last night (the car plus tent is too tall to fit in our parking garage). Getting the tent onto the car is quite a struggle, as it weighs over 70kg and is a pretty unwieldy object to lift above head height. We used a stone retaining wall out the back of our apartment to our advantage, and even though we put it on the car the wrong way around, it's now properly sorted!

We spent most of our last day cleaning the house, which took way longer than we'd expected! Katie spent hours vacuuming and wiping things, while I ran around doing chores like moving things to the car, cancelling memberships, and buying camping supplies. In the end, it paid off, as when the property manager turned up at midday he was very happy with the state of the apartment. We chatted for a while about where we were going camping and then handed over the keys in exchange for our unused rent cheques.

We're now relaxing in a campsite in Algonquin, after a 3-hour drive. We stopped in at the Flying Monkeys brewery in a town called Barrie, whose beer we've been enjoying while we lived in Toronto. This was a super cool place, which someone had obviously spent a lot of time and effort decorating in a very eccentric style. All the chairs had individually been scrawled with inspirational quotes, and the ceiling was covered in concert posters. We sampled two new beers they were piloting which had Hallertau hops in them!