Part 3 Y'all
So let me irritate that the movers came to my house the day before I was to return home from my annual training with the Army Reserve. Well, I fixed that because I was pretty pissed about this training and me not being able to make it up at another date. So, I switched my flight to come in earlier, the day OF the mover's packing day.
I got off the plane to come home to this. My house basically already packed up. But let me back up a few ...
Before I headed out on my training trip, I made three check lists for my husband and mother-in-law to use as reference to keep hidden from the packers before they snatched it up and put it in some random box. These checklists included clothes, shoes, and toys for the boys. My own clothes, along with my husbands. Folding chairs, a small table, sheets, hygiene stuff, ect. Basically stuff that we would still need once the movers took everything else. I mean, come on, we were going to be away from our shit for 4 weeks!
The above picture is the result of those checklists. My husband piled everything we didn't want the packers to pack on our bed and told them. DON'T TOUCH!
In theory, this should have worked. Except my husband didn't expect the packers to move so fast. He forgot to grab the baby's shoes ... he forgot to grab the boy's socks, underwear and a backpack for travel. He forgot to grab the paper plates, napkins, plastic spoons and cups that I had bought especially for our week in the house without shit. The packers took our scissors and our tape.
Guys, hide your scissors. You never know how much you need those until they're gone.
I'm serious.
The packers did however forget to pack my table place mats and EMPTY trash can. But packed our tools and FULL garbage can....
Luckily, we did swipe one screw driver from them before they threw into a box.
Screwdriver is a must people. I'm telling ya!
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| Fun times making forts from all our boxes and playing pretend. What nerds. My Nerds. But Nerds none-the-less. |
See, I've done this before. Not really ... but I have. I'm a military brat. I've watched my parents do these moves multiple times and overseas. I didn't have to stress about anything and I'm not going to lie, there's a shit ton of stress when you're actually the one in charge. And even more stress when you're just along for the ride.
The fact that is was my husband PCSing and not me, meant that I couldn't attend certain briefs and everything was under his name and he was responsible for getting the information and I was left twiddling my thumbs waiting for the next glitter of information to float down my way.
Super stressful. Again, this was our first time ever doing this. We'd lived in our house for 12 years. I thought we got rid of a lot of shit with our yard sale and decluttering while trying to sell the house. But nope ... there was still a ton of crap I kept asking myself why we kept it.
But alas, the packers packed it and it would soon become a Texas problem rather than a North Carolina problem.
But nope. It was real. And in four hours, the movers had our shit packed and all we had left was large, echoing rooms and bare walls to stare at.
I guess the better question was, what would mom and dad do with the boys for those four days?! haha! They were heading to gramma's house while we moved to Texas and set up the new house but because of the dates the movers came, it was cheaper to wait to purchase airfare in the middle of the week. So, they waited for the fun four extra days. Plus, we had to get out of the house before the 29th, since the new owners were going to be moving in!
Tips I SHOULD have done:
1) Not had army training. Apparently I pride myself in being stubborn and hard headed, but when it comes to taking orders from my command, I take them and go. I mean, you have to. It's the Army. But I guess if I had pushed the hardship issue, I could have rescheduled my training.
2) Made my family put everything we wanted to keep into the storage unit. Yes, it would have been a pain in the ass. But it would've been helpful and then I wouldn't have been running all over the place snatching shit outta the packers hands. Which brings me to the next tip...
3) Paid more attention to the movers. I figured they knew what they were doing. And in reality they did. Nothing went missing and nothing really truly got broken, but (now I'm talking about future here) I would have followed them from room to room and made them pack the rooms individually. When I began unpacking in the new house, kitchen shit was with bathroom shit and room shit was with garage shit. It was a mess. So I would've told them to pack by room and when the room was done just close the box and not put anything else in it.
4) Have the kids be OUT of the house. I read about this, but it just didn't seem feasible. But really, I could've just had my mother-in-law take them to the park or mall or something.
5) Labeled the boxes better. We had a lot of stuff in storage in the garage to have the house "clutter free" to sell. So a lot of stuff was just thrown into boxes with no rhythm or rhyme. Again, this plays into following the packers around. I felt very strange not doing anything while they were there and didn't want to impede their job, but you ultimately will be the one unpacking so you want the packing to be as organized as possible.
6) I gave water to the movers. But should have listened to the other bloggers and bought pizza or something for them. They took an extremely long lunch (in my opinion) and seemed they could've been done in one day rather than a day and a quarter.
7) Figure out meals for after the packers pack. We ate out a lot and honestly, that's all you really can do. But we did keep out pots and pans to cook with. This also cut back some of the food the packers wouldn't pack. (they don't do liquids or food). But since we were exhausted and hadn't planned out meals, we just didn't cook.
8) Take Xanax. I'm kidding ... or am I?
Lemme tell ya, it was an empty feeling when we sat in our home as a family for the last time. It's truly very sad. But more on that next time!
Till then, happy packing!
