Moved!

My move is done, just the aftermath to deal with. Everyone thinks the hard part is the packing and the actual moving. It's not. That's the easy... well, easier part. Taping together boxes and filling them is rote and mindless work, physically tiring and endless but it's just repetitive grunt work.  For the

Unpacking

move, we use a major moving company and they are great. They send two trucks, five guys and everyone is polite, respectful of our home and our stuff and know what they are doing. The moves usually go seamlessly as far as getting all our stuff from one place and into another.  It's all the rest of the moving details that make me crazy. Even the transfer of utilities is pretty painless now. I do as much online as a I can and we had our phone, internet, cable and utilities all set up the day after the move. Its the things you can't foresee that knock you sideways, as with life in general. And there are always things you can't foresee, even after as many moves as I have handled.

This move started with a mix up over keys. Due to issues with the rental agency we could only have one garage/elevator key fob. A bit of a problem when the fob is needed for everything and my husband and I had to be in two different places. I am still waiting for the extra fobs four days later. Then there was the leak. This is the second move we have had where a water leak was found on move in day, and leaks are problems, BIG problems, my friend. The previous leak required a refinishing of all the wood floors in the main floor of the home we had just moved into. All our furniture, carpets, artwork etc had to be moved out again for the floors to be redone. This time the leak is in the ceiling of our laundry room and will require the removal of drywall, etc, etc. It is starting to smell already. Welcome to your new home, Faye!

Ted having his non-Zen moment.

This is what a room full of paper looks
like when tamed.

Having boxes and packing paper delivered to your house is a breeze, one phone call and there they are. I also get used boxes off of Craigslist so they come into the house in small amounts. After a move there is a huge mound of flattened boxes to get rid of and enough crumpled packing paper to fill a room. Ted took on the most-dreaded job of flattening the paper and the boxes. The boxes were no challenge, a good knife, a few slits through the tape and a big space-gobbling box is flat against the wall. Very satisfying.  But the paper proved to be another thing altogether. I have friends who won't come near my house now until after the paper has been flattened. Everyone has been called in to help with it at one time or another and if you can get into the Zen moment of it the act can be relatively painless but if you don't it becomes the most disliked job in a move.  Ted rose to the challenge and smoothed out paper for hours but by the end he was ranting and raving, swearing to NEVER, EVER flatten a piece of moving paper again! Not too Zen. It's not rocket science but believe me, its a challenge. If you don't flatten it out you will be hauling garbage bags of crumpled paper out of your home for days.

Ted has left on a trip and I will be joining him in a couple of days. Till then I am, arranging for repairs, waiting for key fobs, slowly emptying boxes and stowing things away, all the while knowing I will most likely have to rearrange it all again. And maybe once more after that. No two houses have the same storage or closets and where you keep things is always going to be different. Moving is easy compared to settling in and making a home. And therein lies the most difficult part of the move, making someone else's home feel like yours. I'm pretty good at that part but it takes time. Check back with me in a couple of months and I'll let you know how its going but for now I'm still trying to find that damn wine opener!

Ted's office awaits him.