How to move
One month before moving: Sign lease on new, pretty apartment in the Big Bad City. Resolve to turn in notice at current apartment post haste. Make a list of all the credit cards, magazines, and other postal flotsam you'll have to change your address with. Marvel at how efficient and put-together you are.
Three days later: Suddenly realize that today is the last day for you to turn in your notice at your current place, and that you only have fifteen minutes to do it. Slap yourself in the forehead for not being nearly as efficient and put-together as you thought you were.
Two weeks before you move:Reserve your rental truck for the weekend before your lease runs out. Make your final change-of-address calls and congratulate yourself for being efficient and put-together again. Pick up a shitload of boxes from U-Haul and take them home so you can actually get a jump-start on packing.
One week before you move: Realize that those boxes you picked up serve a purpose other than collecting dust, and start clearing your bookshelves into them. Complete this task, marvel at your efficiency, and call it a day, after fishing the cat out of a box of books.
Three days before you move: Realize that you have more to pack than just books. Slap yourself in the forehead again and start flinging contents of your closet, TV stand, and kitchen into boxes with a vaguely room-centered organization scheme. Carefully label the boxes so you'll know what to unpack in your new place. Fish the cat out of a box of silverware.
One day before you move: Fling any and all of your belongings into empty boxes or plastic trash bags without labeling. Stand in the middle of your living room and say, "Why the hell do I have eighty-five mugs and six boxes of Ziploc bags?" Decide that half the things you meant to pack can be thrown away without remorse. Fish the cat out of a trash bag full of scarves.
The day you move: Run back and forth from rental truck to apartment no fewer than sixty-eight times. Marvel that your brother and brother-in-law are able to squeeze your couch out of the apartment door without it getting stuck once, avoiding an embarrassing Dirk Gently-type situation. Load up the contents of your apartment, chuck the cat into her carrier (after extracting her from a box) and head out to the Big Bad City.
Notice, as you're driving along the freeway at 60 mph, that the truck has been loaded unevenly, and that left-hand turns are especially treacherous. Annoy every driver behind you as you gingerly edge the truck around freeway corners at 30 mph. Rue the fact that you turned down insurance for the truck while visions of it toppling over dance in your head.
Arrive at the new apartment and unload everything that was so carefully packed an hour before. Convince your brother and brother-in-law that if the couch made it out of the old apartment, it'll make it into the new one. Be greeted with skepticism.
After lugging up every fifty-pound box of books, your kitchen table and chairs, pictures, lamps, bed, dresser, TV, and video games, haul your gigantic decorative chair and couch up the stairs. Celebrate by collapsing onto the chair and having a coronary.
Two days after you move: Sit in your living room in the midst of a thousand unlabeled boxes and resolve to never move, ever again. Fish the cat out of a box.
Powered by ScribeFire.
Three days later: Suddenly realize that today is the last day for you to turn in your notice at your current place, and that you only have fifteen minutes to do it. Slap yourself in the forehead for not being nearly as efficient and put-together as you thought you were.
Two weeks before you move:Reserve your rental truck for the weekend before your lease runs out. Make your final change-of-address calls and congratulate yourself for being efficient and put-together again. Pick up a shitload of boxes from U-Haul and take them home so you can actually get a jump-start on packing.
One week before you move: Realize that those boxes you picked up serve a purpose other than collecting dust, and start clearing your bookshelves into them. Complete this task, marvel at your efficiency, and call it a day, after fishing the cat out of a box of books.
Three days before you move: Realize that you have more to pack than just books. Slap yourself in the forehead again and start flinging contents of your closet, TV stand, and kitchen into boxes with a vaguely room-centered organization scheme. Carefully label the boxes so you'll know what to unpack in your new place. Fish the cat out of a box of silverware.
One day before you move: Fling any and all of your belongings into empty boxes or plastic trash bags without labeling. Stand in the middle of your living room and say, "Why the hell do I have eighty-five mugs and six boxes of Ziploc bags?" Decide that half the things you meant to pack can be thrown away without remorse. Fish the cat out of a trash bag full of scarves.
The day you move: Run back and forth from rental truck to apartment no fewer than sixty-eight times. Marvel that your brother and brother-in-law are able to squeeze your couch out of the apartment door without it getting stuck once, avoiding an embarrassing Dirk Gently-type situation. Load up the contents of your apartment, chuck the cat into her carrier (after extracting her from a box) and head out to the Big Bad City.
Notice, as you're driving along the freeway at 60 mph, that the truck has been loaded unevenly, and that left-hand turns are especially treacherous. Annoy every driver behind you as you gingerly edge the truck around freeway corners at 30 mph. Rue the fact that you turned down insurance for the truck while visions of it toppling over dance in your head.
Arrive at the new apartment and unload everything that was so carefully packed an hour before. Convince your brother and brother-in-law that if the couch made it out of the old apartment, it'll make it into the new one. Be greeted with skepticism.
After lugging up every fifty-pound box of books, your kitchen table and chairs, pictures, lamps, bed, dresser, TV, and video games, haul your gigantic decorative chair and couch up the stairs. Celebrate by collapsing onto the chair and having a coronary.
Two days after you move: Sit in your living room in the midst of a thousand unlabeled boxes and resolve to never move, ever again. Fish the cat out of a box.
Powered by ScribeFire.