It Was a Moving Experience

Moving is stressful. Right up there with grieving and divorcing. The top three stressers, yessir.

I have moved so many times I've lost track. I can only remember two phone numbers, and neither of them are mine. Most of the moving occurred when I was single.

In the last eight years, the three moves have been with a family. Big difference. Four people have way more stuff.

Three years ago, we moved from a suburb in central Jersey to a small community five miles from Manhattan. It was a stressful move. We had to sell our condo and find a place to rent and get moved within a two week window.

If you want to sell quickly, you need to hire a realtor. A good realtor. We were fortunate to have a great realtor. On her advice, we rented storage space and de-cluttered and de-personalized our condo. It worked, we sold our condo in three days.

The move itself was tough, though. Two weeks is just not enough time.

So last December when we decided to downsize, I vowed to make this move less stressful. Renting storage space works well. You can pack stuff up and store it so when you move the furniture you don't have a lot of stuff in the way.

We decided to move over three months and three phases, overlapping one month where we would have two apartments. Phase one - spend a month filling up storage space. Phase two - move everything from apt to apt. Phase three - unload storage space. It made all the difference.

We also took the advice of one of our friends, a former nun who has been a mentor for my partner in the rehab field. Her philosophy is to hire young people whenever possible. We asked Max, the 18 year-old high school senior we live with, to convince three of his friends to help us move. Max is a big, strapping young lad and so are his friends. My partner and I are AARP members who don't do the heavy lifting well anymore. It was a good move.

Young people bring great energy and spirit to their endeavours. It changed the whole chemistry of the move. We rented a 16-foot truck, bought them pizza and had a blast. It didn't matter that there was a couple of feet of snow. I'm from Minnesota and my partner is from Ontario. Snow is no big deal.

Max and his friends came up with a name for their group (The Partial Moving Company) complete with slogans. We just had to take a photo of them in the back of the truck (you can see the snow). They are thinking of using the picture as an album cover for their band.

The most gratifying part came when we had finished unloading the truck and paid them for their efforts. It was wonderful to see their faces light up. They would have done it for just the pizza. We paid them well. They earned it.

I have a tradition going back to my Radford University days where I give away vinyl albums to those who help me move. Max told me his friends were huge Pink Floyd fans. I had several of their albums, including the early Syd Barrett stuff as well as 'Dark Side.' They were well pleased. It made my day. Good music is meant to be shared.

We just finished phase three, unloading the storage space. Now if we can just get everything unpacked ... whew!