Moving…
Posted by
Ilona in
Ilona's Posts on
Feb 23rd, 2010 |
21 responses
I am moving. In a few minutes we will have to go and hit carpet stores trying to arrange for the selection of a new carpet, which will be installed after we move out and leave for the greener Oregon pastures.
I have moved… twelve times in my life, I think. This is probably my longest move distance wise – I don’t count the flight from Russia, because I just had two bags with me.
So far things have gone mildly wrong. First, we had hard time finding a place that would take three dogs and three cats. Next, the dogs have to shipped separately because our Cane Corso’s crate is so large, he can’t fit through the door of the plane leaving from our airport. Now the pool is failing to drain.
I’m looking for moving horror stories. Cheer me up.
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In October, I moved from North Carolina. Me, my husband, three boys all under 8 (including a 2yo toddler) and a shih-tzu who can’t sleep unless he’s in his kennel. In a truck. For four days.
Do I really need to say more than that?
Let’s see…on our last move. The house we were moving out of was sold and then had the sale fall through three times. We were told we needed a new roof, we didn’t. A new dishwasher, we didn’t. Rail on the outside stairs, we did. New bathtub, fixture and window, we did. And two days before the sale was final they called and demanded that we paint the deck because they didn’t like the color. So had to take down any friend who wasn’t at work and paint a full deck in 2 hours.
Getting into the new house we found the water heater had rusted out and had to be replaced, a hole in the roof and the dishwasher flooded the basement the first time we turned it on.
8 months later…all is well.
~Jana
Ive moved 12 times. Once, I moved 4 times in the same year. Twas a really bad year. Moving sucks. Its tiring and very stressful. So I send positive vibes to you and your family that things will sort themselves out and become easier. Just think how awesome it will be once you are all settled. Good luck with everything.
Well, here’s my moving from CA Bay Area to Oregon story. Was up until 2 am the night before, dealing with last bits and pieces.
My dog died that day too.
Got up early to meet landlord for last walk through of property. Which took forever.
Then loaded up the cars and drove up to Oregon. Stopped frequently to let my toddlers use the restroom. Usually by the side of some little dirt road, which was all we could find fast enough (we had a little travel potty).
Got to new house around 3 am, exhausted. Made up sleeping bags and grabbed a few hours sleep. Movers arrived at 6 am and we spent the day moving things into the house.
The whole time I was heartbroken over my dog. And the next day I herniated a disk in my back picking up my 2 year old son.
Generally speaking, it all sucked.
Good luck with your move!
Moving horror stories? My mom found out just how bad her now ex-husband’s gambling debts were when the house was foreclosed on. We had twenty four hours to leave. Mom gave each of her kids a cardboard box and told them to throw everything in there that they wanted to keep. We spent the entire day boxing up random crap, anything we thought we might need, and left it all in my grandma’s garage.
We ended up living with my grandma for a few months trying to find a new place to live, six people in a two bedroom apartment. Then when we finally got our own place, we had to unpack all the stuff that was just randomly thrown into boxes. One box had nothing in it but hangers and a paper towel roll.
I lost a lot of things from my childhood: most of my books, any toy that I hadn’t had in my bedroom, any photos that weren’t on the computers, journals, keepsakes, etc. And there’s lots more stuff we may or may not have, that we may have left with a relative or packed back in a “safe place”. I still don’t know where the baby books are, for example.
And no, my mom’s worthless husband did not come with us.
Moving is a lot like being pregnant. It is really stressful to the person it is happening to and everyone wants to tell you their horror stories. Of course I have moving horror stories too! Moved into my house and three weeks later, all of the drains started backing up. Come to find out the house line and the city line weren’t lining up anymore. Backhoe, torn up backyard, and 1200 dollars later, everything was working correctly. Realtor and Atty both said prior owner’s were at fault for hiding previous plumbing problems, but both said it isn’t worth tracking down the owners who moved to the west coast. Oh, and a word to the wise, if you have clay soil, don’t try to ’till it to replant grass. Clay + tiller = broken tiller and cement-like soil which will never grow anything again! Yeah Kansas!
Oh, and good luck with your move!
Holy smokes. WOW. Can I share what necessitated a move on my part since I don’t have any true horror stories? I mean, I gave notice right after this happened. I lived with a mom and daughter (be forewarned folks).. the daughter was an irresponsible idiot with no job or responsibilities. When her moms out of town (of course) she decides to throw a party on a weekday..because apparently it was too much to wait til Friday or Saturday. I wake up at 3 am to loud music downstairs and naked men walking around. It was surreal and scary and I disliked intensely the feeling of being afraid in my own home. Grabbed a duffel bag, called the cops and drove to my parents house. I moved out within the next couple of weeks.
I’ve lost a lot of books in a move before.. but that’s about it. I have a few cool (or scary) stories on what’s made me move out from places.
The day I turned 24 I moved from NY to PA. Literally, we moved on my birthday. We were leaving our home and family and moving somewhere that we knew no one (the result of placing an ad in a magazine looking for a job on a farm). My best friend and I had packed up my dog, cat, 1 year old daughter and a birthday cake from my Mom in my mini van. My husband and her husband packed the moving van. Friend and I left early so that we could get to the house first, unpack necessities (like bedding, dishes, food) and be read for the heavy lifting when the husbands arrived.
1 hour into our 7 hour trip the engine on my mini van blew. We had to go through the necessities from my van and condense them to fit into my friend’s car. Along with the pets, child and birthday cake.
Our 7 hour trip took 12 because we got lost. There was no way to contact our men because that was before everyone had a cell phone.
That was a fun move! Since we couldn’t get in touch with the husbands they had to go back the next day (6 hrs) to get what was left in the minivan.
We ended up only living down there for 8 months before moving back home but man…what a trip!
We were to rent a house from friends and when we went in to look around after they had moved out we realized how incredibly disgusting the place was. We started cleaning but it was too much to surmount. We actually found an old pizza in the oven covered in ants and then the trail went through the house! Needless to say we didn’t move in there.
Good luck with your move!
In July I moved from the South-East to the South-West. 5 days in the car with my youngest sister who decided to go extremely EMO and umm cranky on me. I also learned that a certain travel agency’s hotel ratings don’t mean what they did 6 years ago! My cats who flew seperately hid for about 2 weeks after that. I am sure that your move will go smoothly!
I moved when i was much younger probably 2nd grade but i do remember that one of the movers brought his TWO pet iguanas. because of course who can lift heavy boxes without their lizard sidekicks. Needless to say the iguanas were not allowed in the house. Despite the reptiles things were going well until said reptiles escaped the car where they were spending their day. The movers then spent the next several hours searching the neighborhood instead of moving thing into the truck. Eventually one of the escapees was recaptured and they returned to moving hoping the other one would turn up. It did turn up one of the neighbors, a 40 year old woman, claimed finders keepers and decided to give it to her son. The owner of said gift was upset not because she stole his pet but because that was his “favorite” one so they came to an agreement where he kept his favorite and she took the other one.
The rest of the move was smooth but that was an interesting interval
None of my moves have been horror stories, thank the gods!
However, my parents decided to move to New Hampshire a year or so after I moved out of the house. Well, my younger sisters did NOT like that idea. My boyfriend and I had the “pleasure” of driving up with the older of the two who screamed and cried for the entire 3 hour trip.
I don’t have any moving horror stories, but I do have nightmares of what might happen when next I relocate. Most of them center around the fact that the majority of my knitting needles are made out of wood and encountering nothing but splinters when I reach into the box where all my knitting stuff is. *shudders*
I suppose this isn’t my horror moving story, but my mom’s.
The whole summer before my freshman year in high school, my family was unsure if we would be moving down to CA from WA. Finally, in the first week of August, it was decided that we would move down. My dad was already in CA because his office had been relocated in July.
Within a week of the moving announcement, my mom found a moving company, with help from a family friend who helped with translation and made sure we didn’t get ripped off. Within two weeks, my mom had the whole house packed and ready to be shipped down, all without her husband’s help while surrounded by three bored to death kids who didn’t want to move.
And then she had to endure a three days car ride down with her family [who does not do well in close quarters].
My mom is an amazing woman.
The weekend before I moved back to the dorms my softmore year I found out I had left a hotpocket in the freezer of my mini fridge. It had been unplugged for 3 months. There are no words for how horrible it was. (insert grossed out shiver here)
My family and I moved 7 hours away when I was younger…twice. With three kids and four dogs one way, and four kids and three dogs the other way. Things actually went fairly well thanks to pills that knocked out the dogs, and lots and lots of coloring books and games
The only thing I would warn about is packing things that you will NEVER find again lol. You remember packing it and putting it in the car, but by golly it vanishes somewhere in the journey!
Other than that…good luck!
It was helping my son move cross country that got us. We went 2980 miles and then the truck got sick in I-95 rush hour traffic. We managed to get off the freeway and after a lengthy delay to our sons house. The reason for the truck sickness was gas in the diesel tank. After a suitable bribe we got the truck back and drove back across the country. Didi I mention that we did the trip in less then 4 days. So very entertaining
When I was moving from Miami, FL to Boston last summer, my parents and I had a fight about how I was going to get there because it was my first move to a city by myself.
They wanted me to fly with 4 boxes and have the rest of the boxes shipped up to me by the post office. I wanted to drive a rental car stuffed with my things because I had this fear of something getting lost. They won.
At night, with a friend, four large boxes, and 4 carry-ons we had to get to my new house from the airport without a car. We found a taxi that would take all that but then we had to get it into the basement of the house where I live.
That wasn’t even the bad part. The bad part was that one of the boxes my parents shipped had something happen to it in transit and half of the stuff inside was missing. I literally opened the box and there was barely anything inside. The post office never found my stuff.
But you’re not doing that, so good on you!
I have moved 4 times in my life. Only on one of those occasions did I actually have a place to move into. Three of the other times I ended up camping. Does that count as ‘homeless’?
As a kid, it didn’t impact me too much, but for my mom…
My poor mom once drove a non-airconditioned, no power steering, manual transmission truck with 2 kids (ages 13 and 15), 2 dogs, and 2 cats from Seattle to San Diego at the end of June. She ended up having whoever sat in the middle shift the gears because she’s so short that it was hard for her to manage to get her foot on the clutch, shift the gears, and control the steering wheel at the same time. To say she was less than happy with my dad for leaving her to deal with it all is an understatement. She also hand-built crates for each animal because we couldn’t afford to buy 4 crates.
I am in awe of my mom.