Trademe and carlessness

We've been on Trademe a lot lately. That's New Zealand's dominant auction site (like ebay, but limited only to New Zealand). We've bought a few things, dining table and chairs, coffee table, living room suite, a lazyboy/recliner and its partner rocker (looks the same, but doesn't recline), a bedroom suite (bed, dresser with mirror and two bedside tables). We've been pretty limited in what we've bought though. There are incredible savings to be made by buying on Trademe, but we can't really participate in a lot of those savings since we don't have a car.

For the large items, we're lucky to have made the acquaintance of a kiwi (who is married to a filipina) who has a van he uses for trucking large items. For a fee, we transported the bedroom suite, the dining table and chairs, and the lazyboy pair. He's very nice, but we can only contact him for large pickups since the pickup/delivery fee is substantial (but still much less than the fees for commercial services). The coffee table and living room suite were delivered.

For small things though, we can't really make any savings since generally we'd like to purchase locally, so we could just go over and pick up the items, but since we have no car yet, we can't pick up.

In 6 months or so we might have bought a car already. But by then, likely, we'll have the opposite problem. We'll have too much stuff and will be posting them on trademe and insisting on pickup only :-).

Thanks to Trademe and Barry though (the kiwi with the van), we've got a house that's pretty much complete. We have two single beds to buy yet, for the extra room, for when my mother-in-law visits. We'll ask for Barry's help for those.

A car would be helpful too, for some things that are large but cheap. For instance, we've been here for two months and haven't ironed any clothes yet. We bought an iron, but we haven't got an ironing board yet. It's too large to walk up the mountain with, but too cheap to ask for Barry's help with :-). We've got some very good friends who could help with transporting it, but they've been so nice and helpful we're now reluctant to ask for more help. Sol has a workaround in mind though and if all goes well, we may have an ironing board by next Tuesday or so. And then the house would be complete :-).

There's no TV, no bookshelves, no books. But we don't really need any of those. WE'VE GOT BROADBAND! :-)