I love to move. I really do. I love getting into a new house and
figuring out how to arrange all our stuff. I love figuring out the
new yard and where my flowers and veggies will be growing. I even
love setting up a new closet with a home for all my precious shoes.
So you’d think that with my family recently moving to a new house,
I’d be all happy and excited. And I am. Except that the only thing
I don’t love about moving is
… well, moving.
I love to move. I really do. I love getting into a new house and figuring out how to arrange all our stuff. I love figuring out the new yard and where my flowers and veggies will be growing. I even love setting up a new closet with a home for all my precious shoes. So you’d think that with my family recently moving to a new house, I’d be all happy and excited. And I am. Except that the only thing I don’t love about moving is … well, moving.
Now you’d think I’d be an excellent mover. My family moved 11 times before I was 17. And each time about two days before the move, other people packed up all our junk. All we had to do was get to the new place and voila! All our junk was waiting for us. Well, except for once when our stuff was confiscated. I swear, everyone says Canada is filled with nice people, but I can tell you from experience that they have a dark side.
Of course, later on at school I tossed my stuff into garbage bags, jammed them into the car trunk and moved to the next apartment. I was only worried about two things: mixing up a moving bag with the actual trash and hoping like heck the cockroaches didn’t follow me to the new place. It’s always been my personal opinion that getting new cockroaches is the best policy. Those old ones have attitude when they move from place to place.
Anyway, I guess you can tell by now that my move hasn’t been smooth. Oh, I had plans for it to be run like a well-oiled machine. I spent days searching the Web, learning everything there was to know about moving. I even ordered moving kits online. I ordered kitchen appliance kits. I ordered media kits. I ordered dish kits and pan kits and bathroom kits. Heck, I even hired movers.
Too bad I was so busy ordering kits that I didn’t have time to actually pack many boxes. Turns out that packing your stuff is really an important part of moving. You see, when the movers arrive at 9 a.m. Saturday morning, they actually expect that you will be awake and have boxes packed up so they can load them into truck. Silly movers. Don’t they know I’m a great planner, but stink at execution?
So there I was, with my entire family, including my parents, running around the house yelling things like “Laurie, have you even packed one box?” Which I think was totally unfair. I mean, between Web surfing and creating some really cute change of address cards and mailing them out to all my friends, I did manage to pack 20 boxes. And they were important boxes too. I filled them with books, underwear and toilet paper. The essentials of life.
Fortunately, my son had packed a couple of boxes too. In one box, Junior packed his Dale Earnhardt Jr. statue, an old sweatshirt that hadn’t fit him since the fourth grade, the track to his LEGO train and a harmonica he won at an arcade. In another, he packed his racing trophies and track champion jacket. Again, the essentials of life.
Harry hadn’t packed a thing. Oh, he tried to excuse himself. But I swear that whole “I was working all day to pay for the new house” thing gets a little old. Please. What did he think I was doing? Surfing the Web and ordering fancy moving kits? Oh, wait. Never mind.
Anyway, thanks to my mom, who must have watched all those years that she had people packing her stuff, our house was mostly packed. She pretty much figured out what was essential, like dishes, pots and pans and all my take out menus and tossed them into boxes with a speed I haven’t seen since she was snatching up the last pairs of size 5 shoes at the Nordstrom Half Yearly Sale. And let me tell, you, that’s pretty dang fast.
And now I am in my new house, surrounded by a bazillion boxes of junk that I probably don’t need. But you know, I read somewhere that before a move, you should purge all the stuff you no longer use instead of moving it to the new house. So next time I move, I think I’ll just unpack those boxes and purge. In the meantime, the garage is looking like a pretty good storage place.
