I was petrified of moving, I had never moved an entire house before and just the thought of it stirred up an irrational fear in me. When Coby and I moved in together all I had to move was my bedroom in my parents house, not too crazy. Now, ten years later we were moving an entire house, horses, chickens, equipment to sustain an acreage and an adorable 11 month old baby and all of her paraphernalia as well. I was panicked!
Packing Like a Pro
I like to fancy myself somewhat of a minimalist, I had always told Coby that every five years we should pretend we’re moving and get rid of junk. Well, pretending to move and actually moving I found out are two very different things. It really made me examine why I was keeping stuff and do some intense Marie Kondo’ing and get rid of items I was holding onto for illegitimate reasons.
We started packing early and in each room we had everything completely boxed, labeled and put in a pile so once we had family and friends show up we made a human chain and started passing the boxes! I know we have all been in the situation where we have showed up to help someone move and all of their stuff is arranged like it’s any other day, NOO! This makes it miserable for everyone not to mention unorganized for the mover because people just start throwing things in boxes, there’s no rhyme or reason as to where it goes. We were adamant that we would be prepared for our helpers.
Luckily, my work office had just moved buildings about six months prior. Our county had bought a different building in town and our small building consisting of four offices and the food pantry were switching locations. One of the ladies has moved numerous times and had the genius idea of color coding everything. Each office had it’s own dedicated color of duct tape that they sealed their boxes with. It worked like a charm! Every piece of equipment in my office was bedazzled with a piece of red duct tape. At our new building we labeled each door in the corresponding color. The movers were great and hopefully appreciated our resourcefulness.
I decided to try this approach in our move as well, I color coded and labeled everything to a ridiculous degree and hung a coordinating sign in each room as well. I may have gotten a little ribbing from our help about not knowing which room was the living room BUT I was only asked where something went maybe five times the whole day!
Moving Day for the House
We do have a pick up and many of our friends and family do as well but that still equals a lot of trips. While there can be some draw backs to having an over the road truck driver for a husband there are some pretty good points to it as well. Coby borrowed a dry van trailer (the most common enclosed trailer you see driving down the highway) from the company he hauls for and we were able to get the entire house packed in the trailer in 2.5 hours!
Moving Everything Else
I have to admit that Coby did a lot of the outside stuff on his own as time permitted. The manager of the acreage we had rented from told us to take as much time as we needed to get stuff out, we moved the 1st of December and our contract technically ended on the 18th so we were focused to have everything done by then. Coby borrowed my Dad’s dump trailer and moved the entire shed in one trip, including the chickens in their little chicken house! We borrowed a livestock trailer from our good family friends to move the boys, our horses. This was sadly my greatest source of stress. I bought my horse Chocolate when I was in the fifth grade, he was my baby before I had a baby. He doesn’t like the trailer, not sure why but he can be an idiot when it comes to trailering. A few days after we had moved the house and built a makeshift holding pen we picked up the trailer and went to the local pub and grub for lunch before getting the boys and Coby bought me a beer so I would calm down! It must have worked because Chocolate loaded like a dream! We put hay in the trailer so my mom’s horse practically ran in there. Chocolate took a few steps in and slowly backed out but was still calm. Within ten minutes he was loaded and we took off. I was so worried he would be thrashing around in there but when we got to the new house he almost looked bummed that he had to get out. I wanted to make it a very positive experience and let him leisurely walk out and start munching on the little slivers of grass. We say that this place must be meant to be due to him traveling so well!
Great Move = Great Beginnings
Our moving day was actually great, it was fun with our family and close friends helping us start our life in our forever home. We would take turns watching Scarlett as we needed a break and tried to make it fun for her so she wasn’t upset with the change, she didn’t seem to care at all. The only problems we had is that we are missing a weight for the weight machine, not sure how that happened. Also, my Grandma had made large, framed family trees for her and my Grandpa and the glass on my Grandpa’s broke. This was actually a blessing because it made me realize how faded the names were as grandma had wrote them in pencil so I am going to trace over her handwriting with an archival quality pen. All together, including lunch that my mom supplied in crock pots our move took 9 hours tops, it was fantastic, I hope yours goes just as smooth!
Pearls, Ponies, & Pacifiers 