Where did all this stuff come from? Four-year-old corn starch. A pack of Gillette blades. Half another pack. A pack with one blade left. Tylenol that expired in 1998. Cotton balls. About a bushel. Why did we have them? What were we going to do with them? Unopened mail from October, 2002. A key that fits nothing. One corner of a drawer with probably a hundred pennies, stuck together with some sort of semi-gelatinous goo that smells like motor oil and chocolate. Trash. Trash trash trash. What the hell were we thinking when we bought the tooth brush with automatic shipment of replacement gel and brush heads. Two boxes of them. Never used. Forgot they were there.
Empty apartment looks like the aftermath of a frat party. Carpet destroyed with potmarks and craters from furnishings, and stains from spills. Walls dotted with bright white forensic ghosts of what was there before. Musky smell of rotting wood from leaky faucet, masked for years by stored boxes of Cascade, Borax, and Orange Clean. Heavy boxes. Earliest ones organized and clearly labelled. Latest ones crammed with assorted junk with mysterious scribbles like, “Not the stuffed penguins”.
Tommorow is cleaning day. We don’t ever want to go back, but we must. Just one more time. But right now, we are resting our feet on pillows in our new home as we await shipment of our great room furniture in a couple or three days. We are, as we say in the South, wore slap out.
I helped my son and his family move last month. They lived in a seven room house for two years and moved into a four room townhouse.
The stuff they had was/is incredible.
We rented a 24’ truck and filled it to the brim. We had to stop moving stuff into the new place the first day because there was no place to put anything.
The next day we used my pickup to carry six loads. My ass was beat. So I can relate to being “slapped out”.
btw, he’s 24, she’s 23 and my granddaughter was three months at the time. How in the hell they got some much stuff in such a short period of time is beyond me.
For the 4th time in 6 years, I am preparing to move with the boyfriend on a cross-state move. This time, however, I’m lucky enough that his new job pays for the packers to come and pack, the movers to come and move, and the cleaners to come in afterwards and prepare the apartment to get our security deposit back. We’ll actually get to fly over together this time, instead of me winding up the loose ends and driving to meet him in a week or two.
The one question my mother has consistantly had about this move is “Well, he’s not going to ask you to pack up the apartment and move it in a Uhaul again, is he?” The last trip was from Chapel Hill, NC to Los Angeles, CA in a 14 foot Uhaul. That’s an adventure, friends!
Thank the gods for full relocation! You have my remembered sympathy, Liberal.
In the last 8 years I have lived in, in order: Waterloo ON, Vancouver BC, Pasadena CA, Princeton NJ, Toronto ON, and Riverside CA. And in that time I have concluded that the only, and I mean only good thing about moving is the “throwing shit out” stage. The strangely buoyant feeling I get by shedding the detritus of my life slightly balances (very slightly) the soul-crushing tedium and effort involved in the rest of the move, and I have learned to cherish that feeling like fine wine.
Ohhh… I’m getting pains just thinking about having to do that again in 9 months! That’s going to be the worst thing about leaving college: I have to move again!
Sounds like you “won’t need rockin’ to sleep tonight” – not sure that’s another southernism but it is sure what we say around here when we are “wore slap out.”
Loved reading your OP. I have so been there…especially the box labelled “Not the stuffed penguins”…I am sure it made perfect sense at the time.
I hope I never have to move again. Hate it hate it hate it~!
We also agreed to help my B-I-L move from a 2nd floor apartment to a 3rd floor apartment in the next building over. No elevators, of course. My legs and back were killing me but unfortunately, my brain was still working very well…every pain sensor in there was working overtime. Gah.
Ah, and the next challenges are 1. locating and 2. repositioning all the stuff you packed and hauled.
If it’s any consolation, that’s actually sorta fun, in a very tapped-out way; a clean start. (I lost my favorite veggie peeler and a shower clock in my last move, never to be found again, probably tucked into packing materials I was too exhausted to sort through.)
You’re through the worst sweat and agony. It’s all downhill from here.
Veb
Who’s gonna be carried out feet-first in a pine box from her current domicile.
My mom has moved several times and she apparently has consistently transferred certain kitchen items to each new home. A few months ago she wanted to bake some bread and so took out a small packet of baker’s yeast from the refrigerator. Apparently this baker’s yeast had been with her for a long time. The expiration date was for the late 1980s. I am not kidding. She’s never used the yeast I guess (or used it and wondered why it no longer worked) in all these years, but that yeast has been faithfully placed in every fridge that she’s had for about 15+ years. That yeast has travelled across half the continent. I guess that yeast is now a part of the family—we can’t get rid of it now!
