We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Truck
After 6 years, Scott and I officially live in a new apartment!
Well, new to us. And same basic location. We essentially moved from the third floor of a one-bedroom building in our courtyard to a two-bedroom place on first floor of building next door (in the same courtyard). So we have more space! Which is good because apparently we had crammed two bedrooms’ worth of stuff into our old apartment. Literally. The movers had to order an extra truck (and that just did wonders for our estimate, let me tell you).
This is what my old living room looked like pre-move
Truth be told, the entire move was a bit of a nightmare and at this point I don’t want to leave our new apartment until we buy a place or until we die. And death may win on that. Why was it so painful? Let me count the ways:
- We initially thought we were lucky since we were moving next door and figured the movers would be nice and cheap (we hired movers because we care too much about our friends to offer beer and pizza for moving heavy furniture down three flights of stairs – we’re too old for that crap). Well everything turned into a logistical nightmare and we couldn’t move into our new place until the morning of May 1st but we had to be out of our old place by 7am that same morning. And movers don’t exactly move from 2-6am so we had to hire movers to take our stuff Sunday night then bring it back Monday morning. Did I mention that it was POURING down rain Sunday night? Because it was. So our movers were tired, wet and understaffed while Scott and I sat awkwardly on the back porch waiting for it all to be over. Then we had to leave a giant wardrobe because there was no room in the truck and serious doubts about whether or not it could be moved without it falling apart in the rain. Anyway, we eventually got everything out (except that wardrobe, which was a surprise gift to the new tenant. Lucky bastard).
- During the packing process we had to go back to Home Depot for more boxes and bubble wrap. Twice. This is on top of the 30 crates we rented and ream of bubble wrap we bought at the beginning of the whole damn thing. Told you we had a lot of crap.
- Then Scott and I had to clean the old place. Our landlord told us we could sleep there overnight as long as all of our stuff was out by 7am so we cleaned until about 2am then fell asleep on the floor with our cat, our plants and our cleaning supplies for warmth. At 3am, I heard someone trying to get in the front door. Panic ensued and I confronted a very confused cleaning crew while I was wearing nothing much more than a large t-shirt (so that was fun…and cold). I explained to them that we were told we could be there and had no place else to go (cue Mary talking to the innkeeper) so they left and warned they would be back at 7am. At that point I was awake and running on adrenaline so I started carrying all of our plants down to our new back porch. It was during this that I experienced my first sunrise at our new apartment – even though we couldn’t pick up our keys for a few hours more.
- Eventually (by this I mean 7am) EVERYTHING was out of our old apartment and by 8am we had keys to the new one. Then at 9am movers came back with all of our stuff and shortly after that we were left with four rooms full of boxes and crates. And the overwhelming urge to hide from it all. There were also more than a few moments of “Why did we ever think it was a good idea to move?!” regret but all in all, we’re happy now that we’re in. And once they paint and fix the requests we made, we can hang our pictures and it will truly feel like home!
That said – I’m making myself comfortable because I do NOT want to go through this again anytime soon. Neither does my cat.
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