A reflection that is two months wide. Tips for working with a moving company.
- Don’t let them take everything apart. I am sure this line of thought is naive but they are charging by weight, not space or time so it is worth it to me to take care on the sending side to package things up nicely so that one does not to have to reassemble things like shelves for a second time.
- Mark things with your own tape or stickers. Use phrases like: “Don’t Pack” to remind them that not everything needs to go.
- When unloading have them group your rooms together. Even though you are in a new space, your muscle memory will pay off when you look for the things that used to be in the other room.
- Keep a list of things that annoy you, are broken or not re-assemblable (like shelves), think about it and figure out which ones are worth discussing. Wait a week and think about each one again before you reach out to the moving company.
- Use as much of the old house as you can but play with the arrangements for a few months. Once you settle on a mutually agreeable configuration purge the rest. I am thinking about furniture right now.
- If it is your first time supervising take a deep breath, have some coffee and don’t be shy about telling them how you want it packed. Unless they will guarantee that what they do can be undone by someone else in a week or two months, you will ultimately be the one who has to figure out what they did and try to reverse it. If they guarantee it they are lying to you. It was hard enough to put everything together the first time around, separately. Now you are going to re-assemble everything, in one day with several nice, hard-working dudes who are as completely lacking in assembly instructions as you are?
It’s always easier to take things apart. Conversely it takes at least twice as long to put everything back together so factor that in when you make you plans for rebuilding your home. It took us about a month from getting started moving on to moving in. I give us at least two months before we get everything back together or stored in a nice place. I am very happy to have a new home. It was just a house until the movers brought our home in a large truck and we started to make it our own just by mass offloading over 12,00 pounds of boxes. Its weird, I loved the stories like “On The Road” and everything that followed but I have always felt strongly for the place and the people at Home. Maybe I like to dream because it is much easier than really traveling. I do like to travel, but it does wear my soul thin and the best places are the ones that call me to linger for a a day, two months, a while. I think there are lots of places that Hannah needs to linger in the next few years. 
