If it's any consolation, at least you can afford movers.  I had to do it without their assistance and didn't even bother asking friends to help - everyone's schedule is always full when it comes time to help someone moving.  I was trying to complete some projects at the time as well.  The last two days I worked a full day and then moved myself out 22 hours straight.  I'm forever grateful to a friend who loaned me some storage space in his business (in an old warehouse building) where I could store my stuff until I found a new place.

I'd reiterate scribe's last paragraph in his first comment. In lieu of that, get help from friends and the TL kid! My best friend packed up my whole kitchen for me. You have too much stuff to take care of to do it all alone. Separate out all the nostalgic stuff you'd never part with--family photos, heirlooms, etc.--but be merciless on everything else. If you haven't worn it it three years, get rid of it...I had consignment boxes for the upscale clothes, and lots of donate boxes for Goodwill for the rest. Same with cooking equipment...you don't need or even use all you have, so let a friend ebay some if it for you. Donate books to the library.

Sounds like the biggest hurdle is dealing with all the documents, doing the taxes, and creating the contract btw you and the landlord. Maybe that's something you don't want others involved in. But even there, if there's something you can farm out to someone else, do.

It seems it might be easier to buy the house from your landlord than to go through all this, but you obviously have your reasons for not wanting to do that, so take heart on one thing: the rental market is not as crazy/competitive in October as in August or September. You won't get the square footage you're used to, and you might not even get the neighborhood you want, but you know what your must-haves are.

BTW, there are some fine looking places -- smaller houses, condos in West Washington Park neighborhood and the area stretching east/southeast from Broadway these days-- that appear to be lease situations. I've noticed some condo/townhome growth in Highland Park and Sloan's Lake area too.  

I think that's because when breaches of public trust occur in socially incestuous places where everyone seems to know somebody who knows someone who apparently knows somebody else who knows you, the tangled web that's been woven often proves much more intractable, petty, vicious and personal in nature than the abstract ethical contortions as practiced by our nation's big-city counterparts.

But while the big-city incidents garner most of the headlines when such stories become public, with a few notable exceptions they tend to hold little marquee value as entertainment and subsequently flop at the box office. Meanwhile, America's small towns and suburbs have an entire cable television network recounting their tawdry tales on a daily basis, with legions of fans slavishly devoted to the cause.

Which brings us to today's LMN screenplay-in-waiting, the sorry and sordid saga of "The Courthouse Gang," who lorded it over the good citizens of Mingo County, WV. Be appalled, be engrossed, and enjoy -- because it doesn't get more tawdry and trashy than this.

Yeah, on some level, it is just stuff, and most of us don't have any problem accumulating more of it, but there's something annoying about having to buy new things rather than pack and move the old things.

And, having cleaned out the homes of three relatives, I know that it isn't the stuff you can see that takes so much time, it's the stuff you can't: the closets, the drawers, the seemingly endless amounts of things in cupboards and cabinets...I'm exhausted for you just thinking about it.

I hope your search for a new home goes well, and that you land somewhere you can be comfortable and happy.

The last time we moved about killed us. Two weeks before the moving truck was due in our driveway my wife caught the flu, and about 3 days in I got it from her. She was sick for a good week then absolutely had to get back into work for some project and I was still sick the day the movers arrived. We had a lot of stuff that was not mover friendly that we had to move ourselves too.

They took everything to their location and emailed him the listings.  When it was done, they cut him a check.  There were several companies doing it here in Houston and while I can't remember what they charged him, it was heavy, I wanna say 35%.  But I believe that was dependent on how much was listed.

The CIA wanted to arm him and the FBI wanted him locked up.  How messed-up is that?

We only moved two blocks away in the same valley, but whether you move two blocks or two hundred miles away, you still have to pack everything up in boxes and then unpack it all when you get to your new place. The only advantage we had was that we didn't have to pack up our clothes, but could just transfer everything from one closet in our former house to another in our new home.

In our case, we decided at that time to buy rather than rent, and we haven't regretted it at all -- especially given the way housing prices skyrocketed in the islands in the two decades since, and then managed to retain 90-95% of their value despite the bursting of the real estate bubble elsewhere.

Although I have absolutely no idea what your present financial situation is like, Jeralyn, I would echo DebFrmHell's suggestion above that you should at least explore the possibility of purchasing your present abode from your landlord, and see if the bank holding his note would entertain an offer from you for a short sale.

Given the pressing professional demands on your time and the immediate need to settle the fate of many of your possessions, the idea of owning your own home rather than renting may be a lot more affordable, cost effective and financially savvy over the long term than you might presently realize. And if that bank's at all amenable to a short sale, that might even work to your further advantage should that institution be looking for the easy out here.

In light of the financial maelstrom that enveloped the real estate market in places like Colorado, I'd say the odds are actually pretty good that the bank's primary desire may well be to simply recover their principle ASAP and move on, rather than enter into foreclosure proceedings and then attempt to sell the property on the open market once they finally gain possession nine months or so from now. After all, most banks aren't in the real estate business.

I understand your trepidations about purchasing a home if you've never owned before, because let's face it, buying a house is often the largest investment of capital that most people will make in their own lifetimes. But to echo Tom Cruise in the 1983 film Risky Business, sometimes you just have to say, "Oh, what the phuque! Why not?" and just go for it.

Think of it this way, J -- this would really be an investment in your own self. And if you're at all as confident in yourself and your abilities as I believe you are, then I've no doubt whatsoever that such an aforementioned "Oh, what the phuque! Why not?" decision on your part would pay off big time for you.

Truthfully, this is still a great time to enter into what remains a buyer's market, but as you've noticed with escalating rents in the Denver area, the present window of opportunity won't stay open forever. Current mortgage rates are certainly enticing enough, and I'm sure you could work with a licensed broker and knowledgeable financial planner to ensure that such a large capital purchase wouldn't tie up all your cash reserves.

Anyway, I hope we've given you some serious food for thought. Regardless, it goes without saying that you always have our best wishes, whatever you decide to do.

"I propose as a starting step... I invite all states... to undertake a new effort to guide the world in this direction ... we should start thinking about a coalition for peace all across the globe instead of the ineffective coalitions for war."
[...snip...]
So the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, has just invited the whole planet to join the WAVE. How come no "coalition of the willing" leader ever thought about that?

Sending you the best possible karma.

Volume 139
Volume 138

Come gather round people wherever you roam.  And admit that the bullsh*t around you has grown.

Students used to get out of tests and assignments by explaining to sympathetic professors that they had been busy protesting the war on Vietnam.  The times they are a changin.

Today college professors lead teach-ins to protest the absence of an all-out U.S. war on Syria.  Back then, the public and the government trailed behind the activists.  Now the public has grown enlightened, and in a significant but limited way won over the government, blocking the missile strikes, but it's not just the U.S. President who looks mad enough to spit over the casus belli interruptus.  Professors are pissed.

The University of Virginia's law school has another law school next door belonging to the U.S. Army.  The University has built a research "park" next door to the Army's "Ground Intelligence Center."  State funds are drying up, and the Pentagon's tap has been left all the way open.  This Central Virginian military industrial academic complex is where Washington finally had to turn to find anyone willing to pretend the famous aluminum tubes in Iraq might be for scary, scary nukes. In defense of that record, this week is Iraq War Beautification Week at the University of Virginia's Miller Center, always a gung-ho proponent of militarism.