Part 2: The one in where I actually do the moving (if you’ve read the Dealing with Dragons book series you will know where I got the style of the title – you also win major brownie points, as those books are awesome)
I finally moved out of college housing! I got this amazing apartment about 2 miles away from campus. Yes, it’s expensive and it costs every month. But if I break down the costs, it’s not actually a whole lot more (provided I was getting a meal plan living on campus – I know myself, I do not eat $2600 dollars of food in a semester – especially not with what they serve us on campus). I was also able to get a ton of furniture for free or pretty cheap.
The only pieces of furniture I’m buying are a few dressers, a bookshelf, and another miscellaneous floor shelf, from one of my friends. Since my father just moved into his cabin, he had an extra queen sized bed frame and mattress that I could have. My mother also had an extra full sized mattress and box spring from when I was living with her. So I have beds in both bedrooms! I am probably going to be putting both the dressers I’m getting from my friend in the larger bedroom. I have a small dresser (that definitely will not fit my clothing – it barely fit last summer when I had 3 pairs of jeans and 7 work shirts and that was pretty much it) that is holding my 2 fish tanks. This used to be my dad’s, but we re-painted it and it’s now in my apartment. I also got a lot of small tables from my parents, as well as a desk from my mom.
Since I moved from a pretty small ‘studio’ apartment and wasn’t commuting very far, I was able to do it in 1 day. I worked until 11 and then met my aunt and cousin’s wife at my old apartment. We loaded a few things in and then went to get the keys (which was stressful as it was, because they had told me not to be late, as they had another appointment after, but they weren’t ready with my paperwork yet). We walked through the house and made sure everything was working (and made sure they fixed the leaking sink pipes – not good – always check EVERYTHING when moving into a new place). I think I did 2 total trips with my car packed full of stuff, 2 trips with my friend’s car packed full of stuff, and one trip with my dad’s pick-up that mostly carried the furniture that my mom had brought up the week before, and one small moving trailer that my dad rented from u-haul for all the things that I was getting from him and my mom.
We finished moving (and I ordered pizza) by 8. There were 6 total people doing the move, and we did it in about 8 hours.
A few moving tips I’ve discovered that don’t work for me: don’t wrap your breakables in towels if you have a limited number of towels. You’ll end up having to unpack when you don’t have time to do laundry and need a towel for when your cat throws up all over the carpet.
Yes, organizing boxes by room sounds good – in theory. If you are using a ton of boxes and don’t care about wasted space, this might work for you. However, I employed the ‘stuff’ method where I stuffed things into every small little space I could find. It worked out well and nothing (I am all unpacked so I can say this) broke during the move (except maybe a little bit more of my sanity).
Another thing wrong with organizing boxes by room (bathroom, living room, bedroom, kitchen, etc) is that you’ll have to have multiple boxes open at all times! This wouldn’t work for me, given that I have a cat who would get into anything that was open. The reason I’d have to have them all open is because I use my stuff. Almost all of my stuff (with some exceptions – books, DVD’s, stuff like that) I use a lot. Once a box was closed, it was closed. I used mostly large blue bins or flip top bins, but if it was closed, I did not want to open it or touch it again (with the exception of moving all of the boxes around my room like 5 times)
A few tips that did work for me:
Pack as much as you can before your moving date. Guaranteed you have more stuff than you think you do. And pack your car the night before, if you can.
Get as many people to help as possible. My friends and I were able to create an ‘assembly-line’ going up the stairs, as I now live on the 3rd floor and there is no elevator. This worked out well, as you can imagine how tiring it is going up and down 3 flights of stairs for 8 hours can be.
If you have pets, make sure you are prepared. I left Dobby in the apartment that he knew until my last trip. When I was moving everything out, he was shut in the bathroom with a bowl of food and some water. He surprisingly didn’t raise too much of a fuss. At the new place, I set up his box in the bathroom and gave him food and water there too. I introduced him to the new apartment relatively slowly – he first saw the bathroom then got let into my room for a little bit with my dad or I supervising. For the first few days, I’d let him out into the rest of the apartment when I was home during the day, but he stayed shut in my room at night. For this, it’s better not to move in summer. I found out very quickly that, even with the AC in the living room running, it gets really warm and stuffy with the bedroom door closed at night.
Okay! Another post that has been in the drafts folder for way too long. If you’ve been keeping up with my blog, it’s been at least, what, a year (?) since I posted last, so I’m making up for lost time. Well, not quite. I’m clearing out my drafts folder so hopefully, I won’t be so overwhelmed with half-finished projects. A girl can dream. Anyways. This post is FAR from finished, but, well, I hope you find some value in it. There will probably be a sequel. Or many sequels.
Let me know what you think!