Or- Having a Moving Company is the Best and Worst Thing Ever.
Part of the deal I got when I took my new job was that we would be relocated at their expense. The moving company would come in, pack us up, move us and unload into the new place. We also had an option to have them unpack as well. Sounds fantastic, right?
Well, you’re mostly right. We opted out of the unpacking option because as it was explained to us, “They will take everything out of the boxes and put it on any available flat surface.” Uh, no. Thanks. I can move boxes, I can’t move individual crap around.
They came in on Monday, and started packing the house. One upstairs, one in the kitchen and one in the den. And by 3:30, nearly our entire house, save the furniture and our bedding. We had to sleep with the closet light on because there were so many boxes in the way we couldn’t turn it off.
The moving crew showed up the next morning about 8:30 and finished up the little things that they didn’t get to the night before. Like an entire closet downstairs. As soon as they had gotten that stuff in the boxes and (mis)labeled, they started loading the truck. They took about 6 hours to get everything we own into a moving truck.
Clearly, we don’t own much.
As they cleared out, we started cleaning. I had done a major cleaning about a week before; this was just getting up the dust and cat fur* that we couldn’t reach before they moved things. It took about another two hours for us to get the place cleaned and emptied from the stuff we had to take with us.**
And then we loaded up the cats.
If you EVER have to move your cats more than 6 hours, seriously and honestly look into a pet mover. For six very long hours, Sarabi, Henri and Motley meowed and meowed and meowed as though we were skinning them alive. The Dying Cat Choristers. We knew this was going to happen; they act like we’re killing them when we used to take them the 5 minutes to the veterinarian.
Into the car and off we go. We’ve done this drive at least 3 times in the past two months. I will never know how people drive for a living or make drives more than 3 hours on any kind of regular basis. One of the first things I did was check how much airfare from here to North Jersey would be***. We get down to Tidewater about 11:30 p.m, which all things considered, wasn’t bad.
We unloaded the cats, brought in the two coolers that had food and blew up the air mattress+ and got down to the business of sleeping. Got up the next morning and the movers were here at about 8:15.
Oh, yes. I should note here that the shower wasn’t working at this point. Yeah. Thrilled about that.
The movers get here and they start moving everything in. They were done and gone by 11:30. And we were left with this:
Wee.
One of the first things we did that morning was to go and find a storage unit somewhere. Most of the stuff in the furthest corner was stuff that had originally come out of our other storage bin. We had to get it out before we could start really unpacking. So we got it out to the bin and called it a day. We were really exhausted.
The next day the fun began.
Here’s what you don’t know about moving companies. They pack the boxes. Right, you’re thinking. That’s the point. But that’s not just it. They PACK the boxes as they are packing. So something that might be labeled, oh, Photo albums may actually have only 2 of the albums in it and the rest could be hats, shoes, dry goods and a clock.
You know this is going to be a problem.
A word of advice. If you’re going to have a moving company, see if you can get them to give you a few boxes to pack before they get there. Otherwise, you will find your socks in your fridge.
Ok they weren’t really in the fridge. They were however in the box with my pasta and cheez-its.
We’ve found lots of things that shouldn’t be where they were. Shoes in with the livingroom stuff. Cooking utensils in the linen closet stuff. Just stuff everywhere. While the majority of the stuff was where it was supposed to be, it was just frustrating to find things that were supposed to be somewhere else when you were either upstairs and it needed to be downstairs.
However, when we move again, we WILL hire movers. Hell, I’ll deal with socks in my fridge as long as I don’t have to pick up that china cabinet.
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*My lord the cat fur. Taught me a lesson about not moving the bed twice a year.
**Dad, you may want to check the suspension on the back of the Land Cruiser.
***$440 for two people roundtrip. Not too bad, but also not something we’re going to do all the time either.
+Please note that if you have an air mattress, make sure that you have a blanket above and below the occupants. Otherwise, it’s just freakin’ cold all night long.
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