(by Pat)
I spent a couple hours hours emptying the car of all the crap that had accumulated and cleaning every possible inch. It's amazing how much junk falls in a minivan courtesy of two kids (food and pencils, mostly). Sometimes I wonder if empty water bottles actually have the ability to breed in minivan captivity. And blue marker really does come out of the backs of the driver seats (yay). I'm a bit puzzled as to why car washes are not open at 8pm on Sunday nights, but I assume it's some odd Boston Blue Law, dating back to the Pilgrims (they were very strict about drinking, public lewdness, and the washing of cars).
According to the Kelly Blue Book online, we could expect to get as much as $3,985 for our car. It's a 2003 Dodge Caravan with 75,000 miles. Runs pretty good, but has a dent in the back from some idiot who didn't realize he didn't know how to parallel park. It's a sturdy, reliable car. Since we're ready to move ahead and sell this thing, I think we'll probably try to sell it for $3,400- $3,500, which seems to make it competitive with other cars for sale.
It's been 10 years since I last sold a car, so I'm curious to see how things have changed. I figure we'll list it on Craigslist and see what happens, and maybe try a couple other web sites, if necessary.
Now that I've got it all cleaned, I don't really want to let any children back inside. Tracy says we should just basically act like it's already been sold and start living our lives as if we don't have the car. Which makes a certain amount of sense (especially since we had another little car binge day today, with a visit to the garden and 3 grocery stores and Target (we stocked up on kitty litter for a while--very hard to get home on a bicycle)).
I'm a little nervous about all of this. In a way, it feels almost like moving. Once this happens, we'll have a different sense of geography for a while, just like when you move to a new house--our patterns of movement around the Boston area will definitely change.