I can be messy and a slob, but in certain aspects I can be totally organized! This was one of those times! During the weeks when the house was on the market, my room was spotless. And I cannot tell you how much of a pain that it was to keep my room looking like that! My dad kept complimenting me on my room, everyday, to the point where I just kind of brushed him off. "Yeah okay, dad thanks." But once the house was pretty much sold and we stopped having showings, I let loose a little. And then we had to start packing. With my dad already being in Colorado, it was all up to my mom and me. All of her belongings as well as my dad's things, were being packed by the movers to take it all to Colorado. Everything I owned and all that was going on my moving truck to PA, we were packing. If you are moving and you are packing all of your belongings yourself, might I suggest doing it like a month in advance!
To add to all of that insanity, we had different things going to PA at different times. For example, my car was going on the car carrier to PA a week or so before we left so that my car would get to PA before we did and I'd have my own car available to drive around. This was crucial because my sister and brother-in-law both work at separate hospitals in completely different areas so they both needed their own vehicles. So I was able to put 100 lbs of items in the back of my car, I filled the trunk space with heavy coats and pants, boots, and a big box of toiletries, and other stuff. Then I had to figure out what was going on the moving truck- which might not get to PA for 7-14 days after they left our house in Texas. And then I had to decide what to pack on my suitcases to bring on the plane with me. See, chaos. Looking back, making a list of what I wanted to go where and when might have been helpful, but hindsight is always 20/20.
Everything in my room was going to PA, my bed, bookcases, everything in the bookcases, my big honking desk from IKEA, all of my clothes, etc., and then random miscellaneous stuff that I was bringing to my sister, stuff from our childhood- Beanie Babies and stuffed animals from when we were little, a box of stuff she had kept from her middle school days, a patio table and chairs, rockers that were for her front porch, doll furniture for when either of us eventually have daughters. I didn't want certain things to go all the way to Colorado with my parents because I didn't know when I was going to need it and then to get it to PA was going to be hard. So I went through everything from the attic that was brought down into the garage and set all that I wanted aside.
I will admit that my mom did a majority of the packing. I was still working everyday, either nannying for the boys or at my church. So I did what I could when I could squeeze in the time. And then once I was done at church, my Tuesdays and Thursdays became packing days. Then when I said good-bye to the boys, I was packing full time. My mom became Speedy Packing Woman, while she did it all in an organized fashion- she was an old pro at packing a box of anything. I was pretty much a green newbie and took things slower. ;) Apparently it took me 3 hours to pack one box of craft supplies. In my defense, I don't have a lot of separate boxes for my craft items and I didn't want to throw everything into a box and be done. So I organized everything in that box, multiple times mind you, until it was all the way I wanted it. All the papers went at the bottom, then I had other items on top of that, with stickers and misc. loose things in envelopes I had made out of old scrapbook paper. It all made for one heavy box. Packing my stories and writings was another tedious task as I would read through "just a couple of pages" of something I had written and an entire half hour had passed where nothing got done.
Finally everything was done and packed. I think we were right up to the deadline of when the people packing my parent's things came and I was still not finished! So I spent that day tying up loose ends and that is when I just started to throw random stuff into boxes without really caring anymore. I had gotten to the point where I was burnt out and sick of packing. Once everything in the entire house was packed up, our house looked like a maze, literally. To get to anything, the sink, the toilet, the shower, you had to walk through a maze of boxes.
All of my boxes were labeled "GREELEY PA" and my mom's were labeled by the people packing, a man and his niece, and English was not either of their first language so she had labeled all of my parent's boxes: "GREEYLEY PA" and her uncle had labeled them with our last name spelled correctly. I noticed her spelling error, but I didn't have the heart to tell her she did every box wrong. But I had a little laugh, because people have always misspelled our last name, but usually without the third E at the end, or Greenley instead. I don't think anyone had ever put that extra Y in there!
The movers came on Wednesday, both set of movers with both of their different moving trucks to go to two totally separate destinations! So on our street there were 2 enormous 18 wheeler moving trucks, they must have blocked at least 3 driveways! Luckily, everyone was at work and my mom's car was the only one of ours left and she parked her down the street a bit. The movers taking my stuff to PA were done in about 3 hours. Everyone arrived at about 8 and they were done at around 11. My mom's set of movers were done by 3. And then we had an empty house. Which felt so weird. The only things in the house that weren't packed were the fridge, the kitchen table, my brother's bed frame up in his room, a patio table out back and random stuff in the garage. That was all the stuff that the couple that bought our house were taking. Thank goodness we still had that kitchen table! It gave us something to sit on!
We flew out to Pennsylvania the next morning and my sister came and picked us up at the airport, in my car. I had packed a lot less of sweaters and heavy clothes like that than I realized once we got to her house and began to unpack our suitcases. Originally I had a ton of clothes, but my mom needed to use some of my suitcase space so I had to take out about half of what I packed in my check on bag and in essence was without sweaters and sweatshirts for a week. Luckily it wasn't too cold and I used whatever was packed in the trunk of my car till the movers arrived from Texas. And what crazy, insane, chaos that was!
My sister and her husband live on a one-way street and there are people- college kids mostly- that park their cars on the opposite side of the street where the meters are. Which makes the road even more narrow, getting out of the driveway can be a challenge at times. The movers knew that we lived on a narrow road going into this, the driver said that he would unpack all my boxes, etc. and put them onto a shuttle- a smaller truck, like a van I guess, and bring them here on that. Friday morning rolls around and I am awake, getting prepared for the movers. I think I was checking email or eating breakfast. I hear the moving truck and sure enough there it is outside the house. The big 18 wheeler one, not this little shuttle thing. "Mom! The movers are here, in their huge truck!" I call up to her. They got here an hour earlier than they originally told us.
Apparently, the driver's boss told him that using the big rig wouldn't be a problem on our street and not to bother with the shuttle. It took some careful maneuvering but I think it all worked out ok. But people here drive like maniacs on our street! The speed limit is 20 MPH, people go like 40 and then half of the people go faster! So the big rig had to move around and they ended up pulling up some, luckily Janine and Stefano's house is on an area of the street where the movers were able to do that without much trouble. Because up the street, past the bridge, there is parking on both sides of the street. Where we are there is parking on one side, across the street. Most of the morning, it was crazy for people to get around the huge truck, because some broad parked her little white Nissan too far up and people had to move their cars so as to not hit her vehicle. People were idiots though, and they still came flying up the street- even though we aren't that far off the main drag of the city and you can CLEARLY see this HUGE moving truck! They only slowed down a few feet before they had to work their way around the truck.
Then when they were leaving, the driver had about 2 inches of room to fit his truck under the bridge that is right up from our house- the train goes over the bridge and you hear it all day long. We were concerned he wasn't going to fit! He was all like, "Hey, if I don't fit, I can just let some air outta the tires!" Luckily he fit, just barely, but he made it through!
 |
| Packed up computer room |
 |
| The dining room chairs all wrapped up |
 |
| View of downstairs from the stairway outside my room |
 |
| Packed up kitchen, note my mom in the back. |
 |
| Master closet full of wardrobe boxes |
 |
| Box of craft supplies, went a bit overboard with the masking tape.... Note: This was not the box that took me 3 hours to pack up though! :) |
 |
| The two moving trucks back to back. |
 |
| Bye old house! |
 |
| The truck in the background is the moving truck, the one in the foreground is a beer truck, the beer truck had to maneuver it's way around the moving truck and held up some people behind him. I was worried he wasn't going to make it. |
 |
| He fit! Whew!! |
