Given the vast suckage of time, energy, and will to live that every move involves, this one has actually gone pretty smoothly. Our local real estate market is both flat and cheap, but we got a strong offer (breaking six figures!) within three weeks. And since our buyers are taking advantage of several first-time home-buyer programs, they wanted a slow, leisurely close--and so did we. As of a week ago, we were still holding dinner parties and hosting overnight guests.
But all good things must come to a screeching halt, and the last week kinda sucked. Moreover, the suck has a long tail: since we can't quite afford (and didn't want) to buy a new home immediately, our move will be a multi-stage affair. About 70% of what we're moving is going into storage for a year (that's what you see above) and the rest is going to our existing apartment, which will then need some serious purging and rearranging. Some of the inferior and temporary furnishing there will remain, but we're swapping in a few clearly superior items, like our bed and our dining room set.
And then there's my campus office, which includes my entire scholarly book collection and which will require a dedicated campus-to-campus trip without passing go--or, more to the point, without lugging everything first up and then down four flights of apartment-building stairs.
But that's okay! Once it's all done, it's done.
At least until next year.
8 comments:
Oy. I hope the move went well.
Next time I move, I'm having the movers do everything--the packing, shipping, and the unpacking. I don't care how much it costs.
Does your new campus pay to move your office? Because that is great. And I'm mostly with H'Ann, except for the unpacking. They would put EVERYTHING in the wrong place. I mean, given that siblings and friends don't understand how to organize my kitchen, how would movers know. And they would leave the books a total mess.
Last time we moved, we paid movers to pack+move. What was interesting was that the packing service was effectively dirt cheap. They estimated (and pretty much dead-on nailed) 4 movers for 6 hours to *just* move if we packed. But if we wanted THEM to pack, it was only 2h more, which was money well-spent.
Of course, we were stuck in a box forest unpacking for at least 3 months, and still haven't hung up pictures or cleaned up the garage after 8 months, but c'est la vie. As Susan mentioned, there's no way the movers would know where to put things.
Historiann:
Frankly, I'm just looking forward to the day when we're moving from only one place to only one other place--and the same people load, unload, and do all the driving! But yes, someday I hope to have packers and unpackers as well. (I don't mind--Susan, SCR--having to figure out where stuff goes, but it really does feel like a bit much to have to pack every single fragile item I own and then UNPACK it too, and dispose of a million pieces of bubblewrap and newspaper.)
Susan:
Not specifically, no. I have a moving allowance, though it's rather paltry (almost 20% less than I got from my previous employer). It'll just cover one pod, one u-haul, and loaders at this end and unloaders at that end--but not tips, gas, the storage of the pod, or the unloading of the pod next year.
And to add insult to injury, I had to get quotes to PROVE that I was moving as cheaply as possible!
Oh yeah. I packed some stuff, had the movers pack the rest - very cheap - but since they didn't pay attention, there was some breakage. I'm living with boxes until I can get bookcases in, which must wait because I've discovered that I can't do my own painting anymore. Which is a major drag. However, it'll be a while before the books emerge from the box mountain, and I'm having withdrawal.
FWIW, the second pick-up (at my office) was all of $50; well worth it, considering they were picking up books!
Movers packing all our stuff was really cheap. And nothing broken or lost!
Good luck with the move!
Ha. Well, next time, folks! This was unquestionably our worst/most complicated/most involved move. Hopefully for a long time.
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