"Moving on up..."

So... you've find your dream home, negotiated a great deal, closed on it, and now it's time to actually move.  First of all congratulations!  Second, sit down and pour yourself a glass of wine.  You are going to want to read this article I found sharing 101 of the best packing and moving secrets.  Here's a little story of how NOT to do things, and why I feel it's important you read this article.  After all, isn't the saying "Do as I say, not as I do"?? 

Ever since I got my real estate license years ago I've bugged my husband to move.  Every day I'd check MLS and email him great new houses on the market.  He was always nice and indulged me in checking out the pictures, but ultimately he'd remind me I got my license to self OTHERS a home, not to sell OUR home.  However, after several years of persistence he caved.  He let me put a sign in the yard "just to see what will happen".  Well, we sold our house three days before Christmas.  I call it a Christmas Miracle really, given the state of the holiday décor we had going on around the place.  My husband calls it something else but that really can't be repeated here...

Anyway, we sold our house, and I started the task of packing.  "This won't take that long", "we don't have that much stuff", and "there's only three of us" are all thoughts that ran through my head.  What I didn't take in to account was that one of the "three of us" was three years old.  Have you ever attempted packing anything with a toddler?  Here's how it works: I put one item in a box, she pulls out three.  Oh, and did I mention that I was seven months pregnant when I started packing our house?  And that my husband was working out of town?  Basically it was a recipe for disaster.   

Really, the packing started off okay-ish.  I would make myself pack several boxes a day, tape them up, label them, and then push them in to a corner of the room.  I felt totally on top of things until two weeks before we moved and my mother stopped by.  She was barely in the house three minutes when she quickly surveyed the situation and asked, "What exactly have you packed?  I see taped up boxes but you still have things EVERYWHERE.  You will NEVER finish this in time".  Okay Mom, thanks for stopping by!  Thus, from that point on the new name of the game was "open the drawer, dump it in a box, tape it up, label "kitchen drawer", and MOVE ON".  It was a nightmare! 

Then came the actual moving day.  I was feeling so proud.  I'd packed the whole house (not very well but that was beside the point now).  I'd called countless movers and found the VERY best deal with the VERY best company.  I was going to save us $$$$.  Then the movers pulled up in the tiniest moving truck I'd ever seen.  Determined not to feel defeated I told myself it didn't matter the size of the truck it was all in the strength of the men.  Then the movers hopped out of the truck.  They looked like high schoolers.  And not high school football players.  More like high school band members.  They introduced themselves (couldn't have been nicer!) and quickly got to work.  But, I knew it wasn't going to go well after the first hour when I overheard one of the guys calling the boss and saying, "you've got to send more guys over here.  This is going to take us DAYS".  Well, great; just what I wanted to hear. 

Despite the fact that there weren't any more guys the company could send out, the movers were able to finish the job.  It took them eleven hours and that was just to get it to storage.  We had to have it all moved out of storage a couple of weeks later but that story is so awful I still can't tell it without crying again.  No lie.  Needless to say, I have sworn to my husband that I will never, EVER ask to move again.  The new house is fantastic but the packing and moving part, I couldn't have done it worse!

However, after reading this article that tells how to do it the RIGHT way, I'm not gonna lie- I kind of want to give it all a try again.  I think I could do better this time.  If you happen to be reading this and know my husband, let's just keep this our little secret... he'll find out soon enough when I start sending the MLS links again :)    

101 Best Packing & Moving Tips