Preparing to move (1) – May 2022
/The pace of our preparation to move to Springfield, MO has increased since my last post about our move a little over a week ago.
The most physical activity has been toward packing since the date for the movers to arrive at our house in Maryland has been set for early June:
I started out with a goal of packing 20 boxes a day for 5 days…only succeeded because many of them were already packed and all I had to do was add them to the inventory and tape them up. Then the goal became 10 boxes for 5 days…not as easy because I was packing more boxes. Now my goal is 5 plus until they are all packed. I had to buy more boxes.
There are some items we have packed in the original boxes they came in….much easier for them to be safe going on the truck.
I watched a video on packing glass/ceramic items and have now packed most of those items that will go on the truck. I used a lot of packing paper, bubble wrap and squiggles – extra carboard inside the boxes if they were not double thickness boxes. The cardboard, bubble wrap and squiggles were reuse items from packages we’ve received over the years and stored in the basement.
We’ve identified an issue with the piano moving…determining how to remove the humidifier box that makes a bump on the underside of the piano.
We cleared a corner of the basement to put items that will remain with the house after the movers leave since we will be here off and on until the house is sold. I am also clearing all the closets and those too will contain items that will stay with the house.
My daughter is coming for a few days before the movers to help with last minute packing and will take a carload of items back to Springfield.
About my inventory list….I have it as an Excel spreadsheet with the box number (I bought a roll of number labels from Amazon), contents, location in current house, destination in new house, date packed/taped, transport (which car/trip, movers, movers take apart before move). Then I do a Pivot Table to summarize my packing (date x transport). Obviously almost everything goes with the movers but I can easily click on the pivot table cell to produce a list of items I’ve slated to go in a particular car and trip. For example…I will probably make 3 trips to and from before Missouri between now and when we close the sale of our current house….and I have a list accumulating for each of those trips!
We are also making progress with items we don’t want to move:
We’ve taken a load to the landfill/recycling center and already accumulated another load which we will take today.
I took wire hangers back to the dry cleaners and old glasses to a optometrist office that is a collection point for them.
I’ve discovered that I don’t use plastic bags for packing and there were a lot of them in the packing materials we accumulated so I am taking a bag stuffed with them to the grocery store every time I got.
My husband is marking off maintenance items at our current house:
A plumber replaced the sump pump.
A new refrigerator was purchased, delivered and installed since replacing the ice maker in our old one was so expensive
The creak in floor outside my office is gone after much effort to find the joists
And finally, there is activity in Springfield on our behalf as well:
The appraisal came back higher than our offer…good news.
An agreement to the list from the house inspection was reached and radon remediation will be done before we close.
