Moving

You have got to be kidding me.
~ Moi

Moving is stressful. Even if you have someone packing your boxes and hauling things for you, there are so many things that can tax your mind. Will the house pass inspection? Will the closing go smoothly? Will the mover break anything? Will we be able to figure out all of the new appliances? Will the neighbors be friendly? Will Riley adjust easily? Will? Will? Will?

Ok, so maybe I’m the one who can’t sleep because all of those questions are going through my mind. We’ve had hiccups each time we moved; some were relatively minor, and others tested our patience. Luckily for us, Mike’s employers paid for our moves until he retired. Until I had to wrap each plate and cup and glass and carefully place it in a box, I did not fully appreciate the job that professional packers do.

Who Owns This Stuff?

You also have no idea how much junk crap delicate stuff you have until you have to pack it, lug it somewhere else, unpack it, and put it somewhere where you won’t see it again until you move again. OR, you pack it, lug it, and don’t unpack it. Two moves down the road, you finally open the box. “Oh, that’s what happened to the electric knife (or photo, or wine bottle opener, or heaven-knows-what),” you exclaim before you throw it in the trash.

When Mike and I moved from Las Vegas last year, we did some serious downsizing. Because we were moving from a 2100-square-foot house to an 860-square-foot condo, we had to rid ourselves of a lot. I swear that in the 14 months we’ve lived in the condo, everything we owned multiplied. I didn’t buy even a single toothpick.

We’ve been in the house a week, and I’m happy to say we have most of the boxes unpacked. Mike is working on the pile of papers and documents in the office. Since the kitchen is my domain, I took care of all of that. We still have boxes, but we can’t unpack them until, well, that’s a story in itself.

Say WHAT?

Each time we’ve moved, we have had some crappy fun adventure. For example, when we moved from Columbus to Atlanta, the mover stole lost $2200 worth of our belongings—china, silver, etc. When we moved from Las Vegas to Nashville, the mover threw put a glass sculpture into a box with no packing, and we ended up with 300 pieces of green glass. When we moved back to Las Vegas, someone forgot to check the gas tank we almost ran out of gas in the middle-of-nowhere Utah with no gas stations in site.

This move has happened so quickly that we were ripe for another fun adventure. We found this house about three weeks after we started looking and put in an offer the next day. Once they accepted it, we put our condo on the market, and we had two offers by the end of November. The guy who bought the condo bought most of the furniture because we had bought it specifically for the condo. Our movers got everything out of the condo and into the house quickly.

And, even better, I got to buy new furniture for the house…YAY!!

We went to furniture stores all over Pinellas County and quickly found out that there is not a lot of furniture in stock these days. “You have got to be kidding me!” i exclaimed when the salesman told us the table and chairs we wanted would not be available until January. “You have got to be kidding me!” when he said the sofa would be in around mid-February. The bed and nightstand? March. (And you don’t want to know what I said about that.) I’m still trying to find end tables, and currently, the ones I like won’t be in until May.

It Isn’t All That Bad, Though…

We did not sell our mattress with the captain’s bed, so the first two nights, we slept on it on the bedroom floor. Luckily, we were able to get a box spring and frame delivered two days after we moved in, so we’re not camping out anymore. La-Z Boy had two chairs that we liked in stock, so we have something to sit on. The kitchen island is pub height and has chairs, so we have a place to eat lunch and dinner. I bought a few rugs through Wayfair, so we’re going to have a Christmas morning picnic on the floor.

How fun will that be?