Moving Part II: Unpacking Sucks just as much as Packing Does

How come no one ever talks about unpacking sucking? Is it cause moving is actually so horrible that it dwarfs the horrible-ness of unpacking?  I hate unpacking.  My old kitchen was tiny, so why doesn’t my new bigger kitchen want to hold all my pots and pans?   Why do I have 23 blank books? (or what normal people would call journals) 23 is entirely too many.  About 7 of them are filled and others have writing on like 2-3 pages but I don’t know where to put them.  In  my old apartment they were on my bookshelf but since it’s now “our” bookshelf it seems less appropriate.  Needless to say it’s slow going unpacking everything.   While packing the old apartment I found boxes in my outdoor storage that I never unpacked from when I first moved in after college.  It was stuff I obviously didn’t care about so I got rid of most of it- if I hadn’t used it in 3 years it was probably unnecessary anyway.    

So back to Saturday night… 

After I walked into the filled new apartment and realized there was still a hell of a lot more to do before we could say we’ve actually “moved in” I walked through all the rooms of the apartment to assess the situation. 

Dining room: filled with boxes for the kitchen, dining room, living room and extra bar stools that need to find a home

Kitchen: filled with boxes and cleaning supplies

Living room: furniture arranged in a way that is can’t be sat on, flatscreen laying down on the love seat with paw prints on it (made mental note to kill the cat)

Guest bedroom: full of bags and suitcases of clothes! Everywhere clothes and more clothes and a side of clothes!

Bathrooms: every counter top covered and stuff in the sink.

Bedroom: vacant middle space with all the furniture to the extremities of the room and the mattresses leaning against the wall where I couldn’t possibly use them for the desired sleep

LOUD GROAN/SIGHing and moderate crying ensued. 

I cleared off space in the bathroom to find towels and soap and proceeded to take a nice long bath.  Found a cleanish extra large t-shirt threw on some shorts and went and got Taco Cabana.  When I got back to the apartment I found my laptop and cleared off a spot on the couch to sleep.  None of the unpacking was really necessary till the next day anyways.

Bruce came home around 1:30 and helped lay down the mattresses so we could sleep in our new bedroom.  Then on Sunday we ran some errands and began unpacking.  Bruce put together the bedroom set and I started to work on the Guest Bedroom.  That night it was so nice to sleep in our actual bed in our new home.

The rest of this week has been spent very slowly unpacking.  I’m slowly trying to unpack things, little by little.  Everyday after work I give myself a little goal and so far it’s gone pretty good.  The guest bedroom is all set up and that’s good cause we have our first guest this evening.  Bruce’s sister is coming down to pick him up to go to Houston. 

So that means I have the new apartment to myself this weekend.  I’m gonna get serious about unpacking the rest of the kitchen and fixing up the dining room.  I’m just ready to have everything in there settled.  

Does anyone actually like moving? Part I

Since we started dating Bruce has practically lived with me. No seriously, 9 months ago it started with just the weekends, then just Thursday through Sunday, then Wednesday through Monday and sometime in January he just stopped going home.  I recommended that he just “officially” move in and he thought it was too soon.  In February I told him I’d stop bugging him about it and the next moment he brought it up like it was his idea.  In mid-March we looked at apartments in my complex and found a floor plan we loved they told us we could move in May 1^st.  I spent most of March and the beginning of April stressing about packing and how I was gonna move this stuff.  Bruce told me to not stress we still had time before the move.  Then one day it was the middle of April and OMG the move was just two weeks away! 

I started things slowly, packing all my books into a HUGE box and then Bruce saying it would be too heavy and me unpacking them.  I tried to do all the laundry in the house; not knowing how long it would be till we could get a new washer to go with the dryer my dad was giving us.  I’d wake up in the morning to see that Bruce had packing amazing quantities of things while I slept.  He can get more done in the hours between midnight and sunrise than I get in any full day of trying to pack.  How did he fit 300 DVDs into two boxes that he was able to carry by himself?  How did he do that?

So the week before the move Bruce had Sunday off.  We rarely have days off together so I thought we’d go see a movie then come home and pack.  Bruce decided we should make a date out of it.  So we went to the Alamo Drafthouse and REALLY made a day out it.  We started around 2PM and ordered just a couple of beers then we sprung for the Growler, which is 2 liters of beer.  We had a beer before the movie, a Growler during the movie and then refilled it before we went home (don’t worry it’s legal because it can seal shut).  When we got home I headed in to start packing and Bruce tells me he’s invited his friends over to hang out real quick.  Real quick turned into all-night and 6 AM came too quickly Monday morning.  So NO packing was done Sunday and Monday night I was so tired that little packing happened then too.  Bruce luckily got to work and was a packing machine.  By Tuesday Night my tiny apartment was filled with boxes and suitcases full of all my stuff I’d accumulated over 3 years. 

Wednesday I got the keys and started making trips back and forth to the new apartment dropping things off.  Thursday Bruce spent the day moving stuff with his friend Mark.  Friday I was on my own again making small trips of stuff, trying to get all “packed” things to the  new place so Saturday we could do the furniture and get completely out of my old apartment. 

We started Saturday morning off around 10:30 AM with Bruce, my dad and my brother Michael in from Lubbock.  I was supposed to have one of my students there to help but he totally bailed and didn’t even call! But that’s okay the three guys I had are awesome and rocked. In about 2 hours they got the couches, the coffee table, the rest of my heavy packed stuff and pretty much everything except my bed and dresser out of my apartment and into the new place! I was impressed.  For the amount of stuff I had they were just plowing through!  Then my brother ended up having to go spend time with his family so it was just Bruce and I for a while.  My dad came back and did another quick run with us but eventually he left too, but took a bunch of stuff to Goodwill for us.  (Seriously a 40 gallon bag of clothes for Goodwill and two big bags of shoes and purses) Then we waited…

Bruce had to go to work around 4 and at 3:30 his friends to help us with the rest of the stuff arrived.  The stacked washer and dryer took forever for them to get down the three flights of stairs.  Once that was out of the way everything else was pretty simple.  Bruce’s friends Mark and Steph were so great and helpful and my friend Mike took my washer and dryer off my hands in exchange for his washer.  Bruce took off around 4:30 and Mark, Mike and Steph stayed to help till about a quarter to six.  At that time I had to go back to my old apartment to clean and turn in the keys. 

Walking back into my old apartment at 6 on Saturday made me feel totally defeated.  I’d lived in that place for 3 years, the carpets were filthy, to say the least, and I’d never washed my baseboards, and don’t get me started on the scrubbing the oven.  At 9PM I called Bruce almost in tears, the vacuum had stopped working and I had chemical burns on my right hand, I was done and couldn’t possibly spend anymore time cleaning that apartment.  He said “Don’t cry, baby, we’re in this together now, go home and I’ll get the last of the stuff after work”.  I took out some trash, locked the doors and turned in my keys.  I walked into the new apartment hoping to feel relieved but then I realized I had to UNPACK.

…to be continued.