After several months of sorting and packing we are ready for the movers. Moving across the city is one thing, but moving across an ocean, then a continent, quite a challenge. And moving after eighteen years in the same condo? …even more challenging.
We sorted, we packed, we adjusted stacks. We called movers. Many people suggested we use a “POD” for our move. With a “POD” We pack; We load; We unload; We unpack! But, we are the only ones touching our treasures. Hummm… sounds challenging, but doable. I called to discover that the cost of even their smallest POD was pretty astronomical. And, to top it off? I was not sure all our household goods would fit in their smallest POD. That was when I decided to call conventional movers…
Surprise! We pack. They load. They unload. We unpack. That sounds better. What about the cost? To my surprise it was less than half the cost of the POD! I was dismayed! How could loading and unloading household goods ourselves cost more than having someone else do it for us?
Yes, with a POD we know no one has touched our shipment but “us”; but, let’s be practical… are we that skeptical of humanity that we can’t trust our move to a professional company? And are our earthly possessions so precious that if the worse happened would we devastated? We hope that though we really love and enjoy our personal treasures we could start over from scratch… if necessary.
So deciding that a team of professionals could handle our household goods we set about completing our packing. When we started, it was easy… we had so many things to choose from. We thought we would pack by room. But, we soon discovered that if we did not consolidate items where we could, we would have twice as many boxes… and, twice the cost. So clothes went to wrap breakable items and kitchen items found themselves in the same box as bedroom items. But, we packed and stacked and packed some more.
We had our moving date. We decided we would prefer to be in Hawaii for a longer period without daily conveniences than Gloversville. After all, here we have food delivery services… Gloversville??? Not so sure… So, we asked the movers to pick-up our goods on March 1.
Large moving boxes, medium moving boxes, extra large moving boxes, small moving boxes, odd-sized moving boxes, picture boxes, even a wardrobe box to ship a special vase, not clothes… As we filled our boxes we found ourselves going back to the store for more boxes again, again, and again… The day before moving we packed the last six boxes… we thought!
In the middle of the night Scott and I woke and realized we had not packed any of our hangers. Not wanting to disturb the puppies we tossed and turned until daylight, then jumped up to gather all the hangers from all the closets… and packed two more boxes before the movers arrived… Whew! We made it!
So fourteen days ago the moving truck drove away with the few household treasures we possess and we walked back into our condo pleased… we had that phase of our move complete…
Imagine our dismay when we walked in and there hanging on the wall was the painting of a waterwheel my son, George, had painted for me when he was ten years old! It is such a major part of the fabric of our daily lives it felt permanent… until everything else was removed. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t pause and look at it… I usually touch the roughed frame… so appropriate for the waterwheel scene.
Then, I thought… we can mail it just before we leave and that way we won’t be separated from it for more than a few days! What an absolute blessing it was not packed with all our other household goods…
