One of the things that I didn’t really mention on the blog was that I moved over the summer. One of these days my life will be more settled and I’ll maybe even have a house that I live in, but today is not that day.

I was thinking back as to how many different places I’ve lived in since moving away from my childhood home to college.  Quite a few really—the dorm, my first apartment in Cleveland, basically another two apartments there, my place in Charlotte, back to Cleveland (3 different places) and now 3 different places here.  I’ve become an expert on moving really, and on packing and unpacking.  (Let’s see, that makes 11 places I’ve lived as an adult, and 3 before. Not counting long summer festivals! How many of you have lived in at least 14 different places for at least 9 months each?

Well, I lied. I’m hardly an expert on unpacking. Or any of those things. I just know I do it, and it is always a big pain! One thing that helped was that we had been saving all the boxes in the basement, so I didn’t have to stress over finding quality boxes. Another pro tip: you can just BUY moving boxes to begin with and then reuse them over and over. If you are a checklist type of person, there’s a neat little checklist from Real Simple that could be helpful.

My latest move was a bit of a challenge due to a timing constraint. We had to be out of the old place by a certain date, but weren’t guaranteed the keys for the new place until… the same date. It turned out we were able to get the keys the night before and drop off a few things, but it was a stressful time. I wasn’t sure if we needed to rent a storage place or if we’d need to park a truck somewhere overnight. In the end, the old landlord was super cool and we ended up hiring movers to load up, and then there was a brief window of time to frantically clean before the final walk through.

Other things I’ve learned about moving. The older you get, the less likely you want to do the move yourself. It isn’t that bad to hire movers. I’ve done moves all by myself in my car, I’ve rented a truck  and driven it (never again), I’ve rented a truck and hired movers, and this time, I rented movers and a truck. It was definitely the easiest and lowest stress option. It was a bit more expensive, and the stress was hoping that they would finish up in the amount of time/money I thought it would be, but it was a safe move and nothing got broken. And my friends do enough for me: I can’t ask them to help me move anymore, and I’m not willing to do it for them! Also by the time you pay for pizza and beer for everybody, it’s really only a little move to just have somebody else do it for you. (So yeah, that means I don’t help friends move either, sorry I’m not sorry, even though I work out 😉 )

I suppose the final suggestion to make moving easier would be to stop doing it so much, settle down, buy a house, that kind of thing. But, as I say, life’s an adventure, and moving is part of that. Getting to live in different neighborhoods and experience different places is part of the fun!