Our Moving Experience
Back in August we moved into our new home. I have done quite a few blog posts about it so far, but now I want to go into the details of our actual move. We closed on both houses the same day, so the move was a hectic and crazy one. And we would not have been able to accomplish it all without our parents and friends.
So to start, we sold our home! I did a whole post about how I staged our home to sell it. I don’t know if the staging is what caused it to sell so quick or just our market, but I do think every bit helps! Well after our home sold, we found our new home a few days later. Then came the time to pack and organize. I wanted the move to be as seamless as possible. First I made a calendar of all the days left until we moved. Then I decided what rooms we should pack up each day. And if you notice below, we went to the beach for an entire week in the middle of packing! This had been planned for quite some time, and it was honestly a great break from packing.
In addition to my calendar, I had two excel spreadsheets. The one with all of the red accounts for all of our boxes. As we packed boxes, I numbered them, and I also labeled what room they went to in our new house. I put that information in a spreadsheet, then I also included the boxes contents. This may seem like overkill, but there was many times it came in handy that first week living at our new house. When we were not done unboxing but needed something, we could easily look it up and find the box. The other spreadsheet contains all of our furniture and items that were too big for boxes. This spreadsheet listed each item, its old location, its new location, where it was stored, and the details of that storage place. So for instance, if it was stored in our storage unit, I would list where in that storage unit it was. This turned out not to be necessary, but I didn’t know that would be the case. And you may wonder why I put the old location. Well for instance, if I listed something as just a chair, I would know its original room and likely know exactly what chair that it was.
So during our staging time before selling our home, we rented a 10x10 air conditioned unit. This unit was for all the things we either were no longer using (aka baby stuff) or were not a necessity in our day-to-day lives. We actually did not clean this storage unit out completely until November.
Our second storage unit was 30x10 AC unit. It was only kept for a few days. We rented it at the beginning of August and filled it with as much stuff as we could. This was full of most of our boxes and a lot of furniture.
The weekend before our move, my dad brought his trailer to our house and we loaded it with as much furniture as possible. This included our couches, TV stands, chairs, end tables, etc. Pretty much all the really big bulk things. We used boxes to create a buffer between furniture. We also had lots of moving blankets and tarps. My dad stored the trailer at his house for the week.
And this is how we slept for those last few nights. We all shared one room, and we were one big cozy family, ha. I did document our very last night already. The actual last day at our house, we went and rented a U-Haul. We filled the U-Haul with all of the last minute things. Like we had a small couch, some random pieces of furniture, boxes, etc. We literally filled it to the brim. And we also had my dads truck that we filled too.
On closing day, we spent going crazy I feel like. Melody had her open house at school that morning, so that took a big chunk out of our day. We then had to pack up last minute things. We were thankful for Brad’s dad who came to town to help. He brought us lunch and helped us load all the last things. We literally were sprinting I felt like. But we did get to soak up a few minutes for one last look around the house. It was super bittersweet. It was our first home and contained so many wonderful memories. But it was time to get a bigger place for all of us.
While Brad and I dealt with both closing, Brad’s dad watched Melody. They went back to his hotel and Melody was in heaven. She loves hotels. And then he treated her to snacks from the vending machine. And it was best she wasn’t there in the midst of the chaos. Well it wasn’t total chaos. We closed both houses in under an hour. But we were busy signing our lives away, and we didn’t need an added distraction.
And after closing we met Bob (Brad’s dad) and Melody for dinner, then we headed to our new house. We intended to accomplish a lot that night, but we ran into a lot more issues and were just too exhausted (aka Melody passed out on a pillow in a room, ha!).
We closed on the houses on a Thursday. So we spent Friday and Saturday moving everything in like crazy people. We stayed Thursday night with my best friend. So we got up Friday morning and started moving the things we could. I had to call in a carpet cleaner to deal with carpet issues, and we started cleaning room by room. During the day, Brad’s mom Vicki came into town and helped. We also had to deal with AT&T and ADT. It was a hectic day.
Saturday my parents were able to bring the trailer up, and we unloading everything off of it and put it in its place. We also emptied the entire 10x30 storage unit. It was a huge accomplishment, but we had both of our parents, my brother, and one of Brad’s friends helping. It also helped I knew where every single thing was supposed to go. It was crazy, and we were all exhausted, but we literally were all moved in by Saturday night. We slept in our new room, and Melody was so exhausted, she literally passed out while going potty!
So we did walk away with 2 injuries and one damaged piece of furniture (well other than the random knicks here and there. Brad has a nice scar on his leg, and Austin had a bump on his head. As you can see below, my china cabinet is missing a piece to it. Well when unloading it, it fell and hit Austin’s head (hence the broken piece). Well when it was falling, the corner cut into Brad’s leg. He went to an urgent clinic to confirm there was no infection. He is ok and has a nice scar from it. Oh and I am showing a very “nice” picture. We have a much bloodier one I just couldn’t post.
Now that we have been here 6 months, we have made some major progress. The pictures below are mainly from the first 2 weeks or so. We still have projects we want to do such as painting, fixtures, etc. but we definitely have made it home in a very short amount of time. We really wanted to be settled and moved in before the chaos of fall started with school and football.
We also got our china cabinet fixed! We had a guy that we use for any wood projects. He is WONDERFUL! Well he was able to fix it for us, and I don’t think you can even tell it was broken!
And the last piece of moving advice…get the home warranty. We were so caught up in all of the moving craziness, it never crossed our minds. I mean we had it at our other house, but it never occurred to us we didn’t get it at our new house. Well our AC went out two months after moving in…frustrating to say the least!
