How to Move — Part II: How to Get Ready for Moving Day — Gay Blue Sky
1. Take time to plan ahead and get things done the right way.
Every time I get ready for a move, I look forward to the opportunity to do things better. To do things the right way. I am going to get started packing early. I am going to pack one room at a time in the three to four weeks leading up to the move. There is not going to be any last-minute scrambling. I have done this so many times and I know how it goes: this time it is going to be different! I love to plan, and I am a planner and this is going to be my most planned move ever. This desire and self-pep-talk has a negligible impact on the actual outcome of the move.
2. Go through your things to determine what can be donated/sold and what must come with.
Books: Every time I move, I try to get rid of some books. As I am always anticipating my next move, I have attempted to stop buying books in the last five years. I check them out from libraries or buy audio books instead. But inevitably I hang on to a few shelves’ worth of books. My first few moves after college I had 15 to 20 boxes worth of books. Now I have just a couple and I am incredibly proud about my progress.
Every volume I own I am keeping for sentimental reasons. My edition of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude was from my father’s library and it was one of his favorite books. Basil bough me my copy of Running Injury Free back before we were engaged (I started running again for the first time in many years after I left my ex-husband). I have hardback editions of Circe and Three Days at Memorial: my brother gifted these to me, and I absolutely loved reading both books. In short, going through my books is now just a trip down memory lane which ends in me keeping almost everything on my shelves. But hey, at least I tried.
Compact Discs: Thanks to several moves and the rise of streaming music online, my CD collection had also shrunk significantly since I left home a few decades ago. When Aunt Terry died in 2018, Basil and I were going through her things. Never one to enjoy embracing new technology, Aunt Terry had maintained a large CD collection and had not learned how to use iTunes or Spotify. In addition, she had kept a large part of my Uncle Ben’s (her brother’s) CD collection after his death three years earlier. Sorting through all the CDs reminded me so much of my father’s music collection. Some CDs were straight from his actual music collection: my father used to burn CDs for Aunt Terry and Uncle Ben all the time. I found Willy Nelson and Bruce Springsteen albums with liner notes written in my father’s handwriting. I didn’t keep every CD, but I kept more than I had planned to. Although I have probably spent more time crying about these CDs than I have listening to them, I am not ready to let go. Yet.
Clothes: I have too many t-shirts. But I love t-shirts: I could forgo wearing a collared shirt for the rest of my life and not be upset about it, although various dress codes and social norms will inevitably get in the way of me achieving this plan. This has been one of the silver linings of the COVID work from home environment: 90% of my time is spent in t-shirts, except for formal video calls which require a collared shirt to be buttoned up over a t-shirt, typically for the duration of an hour or so. Thanks to COVID, t-shirts will be especially safe on this upcoming move.
I hate cold weather and thus cold weather clothes are a drag: if I have any sweaters (or even long-sleeved shirts) they are the most likely to be donated for a move.
Dishes and Other Fragile Items: Before I was married to Basil, I would just use lots of newspaper and a few prayers when it came to packing fragile things. Now, thank goodness, he is here to pack dishes and other fragile items. He has a lot of professional experience packing and shipping things, and so has a well-developed methodology to help ensure all our shit doesn’t break. He has unpacked boxes of my own things I have packed and has revolted in horror at my approach.
3. Book a moving company/moving trucks/folks to load and unload your boxes.
Unless work is paying for you to relocate (a joy I have never experienced), every option you consider will seem like highway robbery. This is because moving things is hard work, time-consuming, and no one wants to do it.
4. Label your boxes carefully.
I think of labeling boxes for moving as “the most writing I will do with a Sharpie all year”. Some boxes are easy to label: kitchen stuff, books, clothes. Boxes containing items which fall outside of these categories are more of a toss-up: when I label them with my chosen descriptor (“stuff from James’ desk”), I think the label I have chosen makes perfect sense at the time. But when we arrive at our new destination and I suddenly need to find a spare phone charger, hindsight makes me think I should have been more specific in my labeling. The spare phone charger was next to my desk in the old house. So, I probably put it in the “stuff from James’ desk” box, right? Twenty minutes later I have rifled through the desk box, come up empty handed, and then tried to imagine what other box I may have decided was appropriate for the spare phone charger. “Other items from office” maybe? Or was that phone charger actually next to my side of the bed at the old house?
5. Make travel arrangements for your pets/children.
We don’t currently have any children, but we do have two cats and two dogs. The dogs are easy to “arrange” for: we will load them up in the car on moving day and put them on some memory foam cushions on the back seat with food and water. They will happily sleep all the way to where we are going, complying with bathroom break stops as necessary along our route.
The cats, however, are a different matter. There are services which will offer to drive your cats long distances in vans especially made for such a purpose. When I priced this service for our move to Colorado from Ohio, I discovered the price we were quoted for driving two cats was nearly equal to what we had been quoted to move as an entire house full of belongings. Luckily, Basil was willing and brave enough to carry the cats onto a Southwest flight instead. (Did you know you have to take your cats out of their carrier at the TSA security check point? I had nightmarish visions of one of the cats freaking out, getting loose, and running amok throughout the Columbus Airport. Basil got harnesses and leashes for them in advance of the flight.)
6. When moving day arrives, execute your plans, and reap the fruits of your weeks of hard work and organizational efforts.
Thanks to years of terrible experiences relocating during my first marriage, my residual moving PTSD always surfaces on moving day: I am a simmering pot of nerves, my mind brimming with potential disaster scenarios. I am fortunate to have Basil, a husband who understands my past traumas and is caring and patient while he ushers me through another relocation.
On the other hand, part of me hates waiting for plans to happen. Moving day is gratifying for me because something I have planned for months is finally coming to fruition.
And I love starting new adventures. No matter the stress of the move, arriving somewhere for a brand-new phase of life is exhilarating, particularly when you get to share your new phase with someone you love.
About The Author
james
Writing down, looking up.
Originally published at https://gaybluesky.com on January 11, 2021.
