Moved
Find new place, sign a lease. Notify current place’s owner. Pay bills, figure out which are being delayed with one or two months and how much you owe that will be billed after you leave. Cancel subscriptions. Think of what you need to move and what you need to throw away. Imagine what kind of boxes would suit your stuff and where you’d find boxes and packaging material, beg salesmen to save boxes for you instead of throwing them away. Stock up with scotch tape, industrial saranwrap, staples, garbage bags, rubber bands, wrapping paper, packaging rope, old newspapers, paper towels. Group your things together, pack them up, arrange in boxes. Label everything. Come up with creative packaging for the things whose original packaging you threw away long ago. Figure out what you still need to use until the last minute and leave it for the last box. Pile up filled boxes so you still have room to move around. Find good transportation for your stuff and maybe temporary storage facilities. Clean up after yourself, make sure everything is in order with the owner. Carry boxes down the stairs into the van, drive van to the new place, carry boxes up the stairs again. Open boxes to find clean clothes and toiletry, improvise sleeping place between boxes. Rearrange existing furniture. Measure rooms and available space, find out what else you need. Shop around for new furniture, transport it, assemble it. Unpack your things and put them in order. Try to remember the new location for everything you just brought in. Scrub the previous inhabitant’s mess. Identify problems that need to be fixed - leaking plumbing, bad electrical wiring, chipped wallpaint. Make list of things to repair and improve, buy supplies and fix everything to your needs and standards. Settle in, announce building administrator, introduce yourself to the neighbours. Identify the garbage bins you can use. Sign contract for cable TV, Internet, phone, whatever. Walk around to see what’s available in close proximity, where do you need to go for whatever you need to buy, what sort of public transportation is available, what public services are nearby and so on. Try to learn your new mailing address, announce it to your bank, your magazine and newspaper subscriptions, your mobile phone carrier. Adjust to new problems such as dogs barking at night, lumps in the mattress, bugs crawling in, burning food on the new gas stove. Learn that the bathroom is in the other direction when waking up at night. Get used to the new climate, rude people, dirty city, taxi drivers who take advantage of your fallen-out-of-the-sky attitude, your family for constantly reminding you that you moved farther away instead of closer. Look back and see that you have just wasted one or two months and half a million neurons with this process. And it’s not even the last time you’ll be doing it; next time there’ll be even more junk to pack, carry and unpack.
Moving sucks.
