It’s hard to believe we started the moving process over a WEEK ago. It’s already been 9 days since moving. How is that possible?! And let me tell you, moving sucks! I don’t remember it sucking that bad when we moved from our apartment to our first home in 2009. We hired 2 Men and a Truck to do the bulk of the move for us on July 10th. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to get everything packed into boxes before the 10th, so as they were loading other stuff onto the truck, my Mom & I were boxing up the kitchen stuff. And just when you think you’ve got it all packed, you realize there’s another area of stuff you overlooked! The stuff was just never-ending! 😐
There were a lot of items left behind by the movers. Apparently they don’t take stuff that isn’t in garbage bags or boxes. Lesson for the next move (Dear God, don’t let it be anytime soon!) – put everything you possibly can into boxes or bags! Unfortunately I didn’t have time to get everything packed. 😕 It sneaks up on you before you know it. You think, “I’ve got 30 days to get everything packed,” and then suddenly you just have 3 days left… This is everything they left behind in our master bedroom, including some clothes we had in the closet, along with a medium-sized suitcase.
It is better than having to move it all ourselves. There is no way possible Alex and I could have moved everything ourselves in the 2 days we had, even if we had 3-4 people helping us. My energy levels were in the negative these 2 days, so it was everything I could do to load up the remaining stuff without flopping down in the floor in despair and pretending it was all over. Once the movers got everything out of the guest bedroom (below), it turned into our “cat room,” a place the cats could stay/hide while the rest of the house was packed up.
When I first tried to get them into this room (by myself), it almost turned into world war three. There was hissing, growling, and fighting meows, and Marble was frantically trying to get out of the room every time I opened the door to put another cat inside. I wish I had gotten this whole process on video. I had meant to get a lot of video snippets throughout the moving process for a compilation video, but things were so crazy and chaotic, I didn’t even think about it. 🙁 The cats weren’t happy about being confined to a room together when they were already discombobulated. The brothers, Oxford & Bailey, are terrified of the smallest little things already, so they found a place to hide and did not move the entire time. Bailey hid in the closet and Oxford hid under the comforter. Poor Oxford . . . I know it had to be hot under that comforter. Their world was pretty much turned upside down for a couple of days.
If anyone has cats, you know how stressful it is on them when moving. They do not adjust well to change like most dogs. I don’t think Oxford or Bailey came out of their cat carriers the first night. Marble walked around just a little but decided to retreat into his carrier for most of the night. Alex said he meowed non-stop until almost 3am, but I couldn’t hear him over my sound machine, and he was downstairs. Jasmine was very exploratory, but she meowed a LOT. More than I thought she was. I didn’t expect her to be the most vocal after moving. Targét would not stop lying in the kitty litter pan/box to hide, so I had to take the pan out of the litter box in case another cat had to actually use it. They barely ate one can of cat food among the 5 of them that night because they were so stressed. They normally eat about 5 cans of food in the evening. And we left their sedative medicine from our vet at the old house. 😕
By day 3, they were out exploring more of the house than just the “cat room” with all of their stuff in it, and they were back to eating normal again, so all is well in their world, and they have so much more room to run around and play now. This will pose a problem if one of them goes missing/hiding and we can’t find them. 😆
Okay, back to the moving process! We Alex severely underestimated how much stuff we had to move. Alex told 2 Men & a Truck on the phone, “We really don’t have that much to move…” when he set up the movers. Since we moved more than 30 miles away, they had to charge based on weight rather than by the hour. The first price tier covered up to 4,000 lbs. We had 8,000 lbs. 😮 And the movers left a LOT of stuff behind because the huge moving truck they had as packed full. I asked them about making a second trip, and they said they don’t do that. If they had known there was this much to move 🙄 , they would have booked two trucks. Another lesson learned. The moving company also does not move anything alive (animals and plants), so my giant area of plants had to be moved by us. Thank goodness I had help with this! We used my dad’s truck to make 3 trips with plants, and my mom’s truck to make one trip. Mom stayed at the house with me to help with packing while the movers loaded other stuff. I wish I had rented a Uhaul truck to move all the plants in one trip because some of them didn’t make the trip too well with all the wind. It’s been a week, and some are looking better, but a few things have no leaves now. We’ll see if they put out new growth. This is their temporary area at the new place until we can get some trees taken down and the area leveled.
The quiet before the storm… I snapped a picture of the living room at the new place before all of the boxes got brought in. I doubt it will ever be this de-cluttered again.
Once the movers had everything into the house, there were boxes everywhere! Of course, the most important appliance got set up immediately so I would have access to it the next morning.
The next morning, we went back to the old house to get the remaining stuff left behind. Two of our friends loaded a trailer of stuff he towed with his truck, and I used my mom’s truck, dad’s truck, and my Mustang to cram the remaining stuff with our final trip. And we still couldn’t get everything! We had to go back to the house the 17th when Angela, our friend, came back with her truck, to get the giant cat tree. I thought the 2nd day of moving would be less intense, but I was wrong. It sucked just as much as the first day. There was still SO. MUCH. STUFF. I wanted to lay down in the floor and pretend it was all over. We left behind more than I really wanted to, but after a certain point, I didn’t care anymore. I just wanted to be done.
We didn’t realize until 2-3 days later that the moving company dented our fridge. 🙁 They took the handles off and wrapped in in plastic wrap, but it managed to get dented somehow. Unfortunately, you have to stand to the right of it to actually see it, so I had already long since signed the paperwork saying everything was delivered to the new house undamaged.
I mentioned earlier that the cats’ worlds got turned upside down for a couple of days, but moving also turns our lives upside down too. I hate clutter. I hate not knowing where anything’s located. Everything you were using on a daily basis is packed into boxes. Nothing is set up the way you want it, and with some areas, you don’t know how you want to set it up {more on this in another post}. You want to tackle every room with unpacking, but you have to prioritize and do one little thing at a time.
I couldn’t decide it I wanted to unpack the kitchen stuff or my bedroom/office stuff first.
Both are finished {for now}. Alex and I unpacked most of the kitchen stuff and put it away the first full day at the house (12th). My mom came on the 13th to help me with my room, so my computer was usable again. She is coming today also to help me with some outside gardening/flower stuff. I have a lot of empty flower pots that I need to clean out and plant with my flowers I brought with me.
It’s been 9 days, and things are finally settling and feeling like home. There are so many things on my ‘to-do’ list for this house (like painting!), and I will cover each little project here on my blog under the tag Our Second Home.