The past few weeks has been a flurry of activity. I intended to better document everything, but it seems that every waking moment was frantically filled with moving minutiae, running from room to room and trying to pack, label and haul boxes, and direct all the helpers we've had. As a result, all I have are some crappy iPhone photos, and no photos of the actual moving day.
We had about a month from the time we accepted the offer on our house until closing. With me located in Duluth, this left weekends only for the bulk of the moving activity. Given how crazy hard Matt and I worked, and the hours put in by our family and friends, I know that we never could have done it without help. My parents came down for two weekends in a row and helped pack and haul more boxes than we could count. One weekend we brought my cousin's trailer and loaded it full of boxes to haul north. My mom helped load:
With the trailer full of boxes and endless carloads, we were making Moving Day less hectic. (We thought we were being so smart by hauling so much north ahead of time. We
knew that if all we had left was furniture we'd fit everything in one truck. Ha.)
During a break in the packing, I snapped this pic of Dad reassuring Hannah that everything would be ok.
My friend Erika came and helped one day, and quickly became the bubble-wrap-and-shrink-wrap expert, spending hours wrapping all our prints and art. Oh, if only I had a picture of her "aerobic wrapping"!
My friend Chad came too and we put him to work hauling box after box out of our basement, into the garage.
And our friend Jamie came one evening and helped Matt haul several arcade games out of the basement. (Yes, my husband owns 9 old-school, full-size arcade games. We
still thought all our stuff would fit in one truck. Ha!)
The weekend before the big move, we took a break in the packing ... we had decided to continue with plans for our Super Bowl party, so we made chili and appetizers and visited with friends for the evening. This was Matt's 10th Annual Super Bowl Party ... all ten of which were in the Cities. How fitting that the last one in the Cities was on such a nice, round anniversary.
After driving to the Cities every weekend--and driving north in a couple scary snowstorms (including one where I counted 31 cars in the ditch)--I was getting pretty exhausted. We had been working long days at work, and in evenings I was doing things like mortgage paperwork, preparing things at Adam's house, organizing the storage unit, planning Moving Day (movers, food, logistics) ... oh, and yeah, I was headed to Arizona two days after the move, so I was also doing laundry and trying to prepare myself for vacation. We were moving on a Saturday morning, so that Friday night I put myself in a car and dragged myself to the Cities ...
... and after an incredibly long day of work and driving, walked in to discover there was still tons to be packed. This scene in the kitchen repeated itself throughout the house.
Matt's "day off to pack" had been ruined by a work emergency, so instead of finishing packing, he was on his computer. Exhausted and overwhelmed, but determined not to be one of those people whose movers show up to realize not everything is packed, we drove to Home Depot at 8:30 on Friday night, bought more boxes and supplies, and dove in for hours of packing.
Let's just say that's not how I intend to spend future Friday nights.
I didn't sleep well that night. I was on edge thinking about all that had to happen that Saturday, so was awake by 6:00 to finish packing details and go pick up our
26' moving truck. Boy, I sure wish I had a picture of that moving truck in front of our garage. It looked huge in front of our house (we never thought we'd have space to back it into the driveway) and I was impressed with my hubby's truck driving skills.
Hey, if the photography and developer gigs don't work out, you can always be a truck driver, I told him.
But despite the size of this truck, when I saw it sitting in the Ryder parking lot, I felt nauseous. Butterflies. Anxiety.
Standing at the rental counter, Matt turned to me - "Are you doing ok?"
"I'm just really nervous about all our stuff fitting. I don't think it'll all fit."
The rental guy chimes in - "It's the largest size we have. Somehow you cram it in. It always fits!"
Yeah, right.Let me just say that despite the rental guy being wrong, Ryder was an excellent company to go with. The truck was started up, fueled up, and sparkling clean. The rate was unbeatable -- $74/day for the largest truck they had, which included 500 miles. And this cool hydraulic lift in the back made it so easy to load!
Well, with butterflies in my stomach I followed the big Ryder back to our house. Erika and Aaron showed up with bagels and coffee for our movers. Soon we had a house full ... Chad, Kelcie, Sam, Jamie, Kyle, Josh, even our realtor/friend Joe. Things started flying out of our house and onto the truck, and at one point I went out to the truck, assessed the volume of stuff left, and said "I don't think it's all going to fit."
Sure enough -- pretty soon we decided to triage, loading the heaviest furniture only, since we had help. It became obvious that we would be doing a second trip. We said good-bye to our Victoria crew, and drove north, Matt driving the moving truck and I driving Matt's Explorer. We met our Cloquet moving crew at the storage facility. Wow, what a crew! My bro Adam, coworkers Chuck and Cindy (with her boyfriend Mike and pup Aurora), cousin Ryan -- and his brother Nick, who came to help without even being asked -- Ron and Teresa, Brooke with Cruz, Jeanne, cousin Alyssa, my Grandma ... who am I forgetting? Things flew even faster off the truck, and we had a hard time keeping up with the instructions of where things were supposed to go. Some were supposed to go in one storage unit, some in another, some to my brother Adam's, and some to my parents.
The whole unloading process took an hour. Many hands made light work, for sure. After a break at my parents' house for food and drink (the storage units are across the street making it very convenient to feed all our help), we drove the moving truck up to Adam's house to unload stuff there, drove the truck back to my parents' house where it would be stored for the night, then drove back to Adam's house to get a bed in order and collapse exhausted.
We woke up at 5:30 the next morning to return to the Cities for our second load. This time it was just Matt and me. We spent two and a half hours filling the truck up a second time, then turned around and drove right back North, where we were met by my brother and dad to unload everything into storage. We rested for about half an hour, and piled into the vehicles to return to the Cities. Yes, I saw that stretch of freeway three times in one day, and six times in one weekend.
In the end, we had two full storage units:
Sheesh, what a lot of stuff. And this is AFTER we had donated carloads of clothing and household goods, recycled tons of old electronics, and even filled a dumpster at our house. We have too much stuff, for sure.
Back in the Cities, my husband had a wonderful Valentine's Day surprise for me. Instead of camping out on the floor of our empty house, and spending the evening cleaning, we would be staying in a whirlpool suite with a king size bed! What a sweetie. We really needed a soak in the tub and a good night's sleep. I think that whirlpool was the reason why I wasn't very sore the next week.
Thankfully Monday was a holiday, so we spent that day cleaning furiously at the house ... scrubbing floors, wiping out cupboards and drawers, cleaning bathrooms, even steam cleaning the carpets. Monday evening I finally drove back to Adam's, to get ready for work the next day and for my vacation.
The move was over.
For now.
