Welcome to moving...again.

Yes, I change the place where I crash every night, again. This is my fourth move in roughly five years. I do think this move went a lot better than the last one. Then again I only moved ten minutes from my last apartment, instead of two states over.

Moving takes a lot out of a person. Even more so when you're doing it on all by yourself. Thankfully my last roommate is understanding and is letting me take my time getting everything out and my new landlady is really nice.

The thing about moving is you never know how much stuff you have until you have to pack it all up. The. You have to find it all again while your unpacking. Some items might not survive a move. My DVD player seems to not want to turn on anymore. This is unfortunant because I didn't realize that I had left a DVD in it.

When it comes to furniture, you might have to get creative. The first couple of places I looked at, I had to say no to right away because my stuff wouldn't have fit. Hiring movers is a good idea if you have the money and don't have a friend who moves big items for a living.

If you are interested, you can read about my first adventures in moving Here and Here. Now that I've moved again to my own place here are a few tips:

1) Hire movers only if you have to - moving is expensive. If you don't have to hire someone to help you, the better. However if you do have to hire movers...

2) Get recommendations for Movers - there are a lot of Internet horror stories out there. I find that the most reliable way to get good movers (or at least people who won't scan you) is to ask people who they have used and liked. I found out about these movers from a coworker.

3) Start packing as soon as possible - the first time it took forever to get all my stuff into boxes. This time I started packing about two weeks in advance and half of my stuff was already packed up in storage.

4) Be flexible - things will go wrong, something unexpected will happen. The best thing to do is to factor it in early and roll with he punches.

5) Take sometime to relax - moving is stressful and no matter how much I wish everything was already unpacked in its rightful place, it's not. I don't want to get burnt out and won't want to either. Taking sometime to sit down and take a break lets me regroup and think about my next step.

After a long weekend of moving, I'm super tired and now need to be bright eyed and bushy tailed for work tomorrow. I'm going to curl up on my couch and sleep for a nice long 8 hours. That's right! I've got my couch back! How I missed my baby! Until next week.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me. Now I'm going to sleep...zzzzz.

Welcome To Moving Part 1

Otherwise Titled: Adventures In What Not To Do

So yesterday I wasn't exactly in the best place to try and write out a blog post. The day before I was in an even worse place. I moved on Saturday from the Baltimore suburbs to Northern New Jersey, right on the border to New York State. To say the experience was traumatic would be putting it mildly. I've been nothing but a reck since Saturday morning.

My first mistake was thinking I only needed two days to pack up my apartment. This was the first among many. By Friday night (or ungodly o'clock Saturday morning) I finally crashed on my sofa. I had only packed a few boxes and the movers were due in less than eight hours. I had spent the day running around like crazy trying to return the cable boxes, put in a change of address, drop things off at Goodwill and throw out as much as I could. It wasn't nearly enough.

What I should have done is take off a whole week.

So when the movers arrived Saturday morning, what was the first thing I did? Oh yeah, I burst into tears. 

My next mistake was thinking that it would only take a few hours to pack everything up, get it all into the truck, and finish up cleaning the apartment. I thought I'd hit the road around noon and have everything off the truck by nine. 

Oh boy was I wrong.

It took nearly five hours to get everything packed and onto the truck. The cleaning took so long I finally gave up and I hope I get even just a bit back from my deposit. I cried several more times and wanted to curl up in a tiny ball and refuse to leave. The movers did let me put in Ducktales until they had to pack up the TV and DVD player.

I ended up leaving close to four.

The movers decided it would be best to come on Sunday to drop everything off. It was one of the very few good decisions I made.

I took the long way to New Jersey. You know how it is. I wanted to avoid all the tolls off of 95 and it would cost less if I accidently took the wrong exit. That was where the good decisions ended. The first leg of the journey was simple enough. I had done that trips for years on my way to visit my granddad. I ended up getting lost, not once (oh no, I'm that kind of special), but twice. Thankfully the first time I ended up on a road that paralleled the route I was actually supposed to take. The second was a mixed up exit that took me about twenty minutes out of my way. Both were very pretty and very vexing. 

I managed to get to the apartment around nine. Thankfully my new roommate was here and she was able to let me in. This leads to my next epic mistake.

I way over packed my car. 

Like to the point where I still haven't gotten nearly enough out of it. I ended up passing out on the couch. I slept for well over eight hours (maybe around nine). 

This brings us to yesterday.

I woke up and went out to breakfast. It was pretty cool that I was actually able to walk to a coffee shop instead of be really confused as to where the hell I should forage for food. On the way back I was able to pet a very cute husky. That was where the good part of the day ended.

The movers were unfortunantly two hours late. They got stuck in traffic less than twenty miles from the apartment. Don't get me wrong, these guys were amazing. I would totally recommend this moving company to anyone. Five stars all the way. 

They basically filled my room with boxes. They filled it to the point that there was hardly any room to maneuver the rest of the furniture and I had to get a little creative. 

We then went to my storage unit (because let's be real, I moved from a single bedroom apartment that was mine to an apartment share, I needed more storage). We filled it up.

Here's where we get to another mistake. I didn't exactly know where anything was. I discovered today that one of my kitchen boxes that should have been in storage is actually here. I have no idea where the other box is that has the stuff I actually need today. I'm not going to have fun digging it out if it's in storage.

Finally I had to set up my bed. Thankfully a guy I met the last time was up here (a potential roommate that didn't work out) was willing to help. He first took me out to dinner (again smart despite the fact I wanted to get started right away). 

Now getting the bed together was a challenge to end all challenges. We can thank IKEA for its wonderful bed designs. It took four hours to put together and we kept messing up. It didn't seem like we could do anything right putting it together. It did eventually get done, but parts of it are a little shaky and I don't think it will make it to my next location (where ever that might be).

My adventures in New Jersey have only just begun, but already I long for Baltimore and DC. I want to go home. Back to my own apartment with all of my things in my crazy chaotic way instead of feeling like an invader into someone else's domain. I hope I adjust soon. 

Until next week.

If you enjoyed this post, or it really pissed you off, please like, share or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys love hearing from me. Right now this blog might be the only thing keeping me sane.