I Hate Packing: The Sequel.

This is the 3rd in a series on moving, which is something I am doing at the moment. It's not the Lord of The Rings, but it is definitely a 4-Part Saga. The other two parts can be viewed via these links. The 4th part will be written after we are moved in and set up.

Part 2. Greetings From The Dark Ages:
https://www.bebee.com/producer/@jim-murray/greetings-from-the-dark-ages

Part 1. I Hate Packing. A Self Directed, And Hopefully, Therapeutic, Rant  https://www.bebee.com/producer/@jim-murray/i-hate-packing-a-self-directed-and-hopefully-therapeutic-rant

My wife headed out this morning with another load full of odds and ends of which we evidently have many.
The strategy here was to pack as many odd-shaped and fragile things into the car. so that the movers would have a relatively easy time stacking all our boxes and tubs (close to 100) in the truck.
The reason for this strategy is that these days movers, at least the ones we talked to, all charge by the hour. And believe it or not, they want to be as efficient as possible.
Moving companies have changed over the years. And the most significant way they have changed is that they become much more empathetic to the stress level of the people they are moving.

Oddly enough, this is actually the first time we have moved with a real moving company (Two Men & A Truck - we actually got three men), the other times we did it ourselves or enlisted friends to help us.
But our friends no longer have any interest it doing that, as you can well imagine.
The other thing that good moving companies have done is develop their own strategies. An important part of that is hiring and training their own people, as opposed to, in the old days, just recruiting anybody who was available, had some stamina and needed the work.
These ‘new’ movers, are much better prepared. They send people around to type stuff into tablets and calculate just how much stuff you have and and then compare that to stats of people with similar amounts of stuff to determine the size of the truck and how everything will fit into it.
They are also trained in the art of packing stuff. So there's a real logic to everything they do, mainly because they don;t want to end up getting sued for breaking something precious and valuable, just because they didn't have their shit together.

It’s quite a fascinating process and when it’s explained to you, it just naturally creates a level of confidence in you that the people are pros and they will take good care of you.

Charity Begins At Home

One of the things we determined about our move is that the ‘family’ room area of our basement in our new house is a hell of a lot larger than the one we have now, and our small couch will be dwarfed in this environment. We really need some sort of sectional thing.
So I talked to my real estate agents and asked them if the new owner would want it. The long and short of it was that he is downsizing and has tons of furniture. But our agent said that their company supports the Syrian refugee program and that they would be pleased to take it away and donate it to that cause.
This gave us some other ideas.
Since we will now have central air and heating, we can also get rid of several of the fanes we used to circulate the air from wall mounted A/C units. Which, believe me, is a total pain in the ass.
We also decided that these people could probably use our printers, as we are going to buy a wireless printer and just have the one. Which makes sense since we are pretty much paperless these days.
I thought the idea of donating the stuff you don’t want was pretty cool and it gave us a bunch less stuff to deal with on moving day.
This is something I don’t think I would have thought of on my own either, but it makes a lot of sense. Because whenever you move you always end up scrapping some stuff that isn’t necessarily garbage. So why not give it to someone who can really use it? Duh.

My Stress Level

One of the other things I have noticed is that as we get closer to the actual move, my stress level is dropping.
This, I believe is attributable to a combination of preparedness and the acceptance of the inevitable. One way or another, the majority of our stuff will be safely ensconced in our new house by Monday PM.
I have been packing for a few weeks now, and there is very little left to go into boxes. I have been labeling boxes and there are very few left to label.

Here’s An Idea

The other thing I have been doing with some of the larger boxes is cutting out hand holds on the side of them to make them easier to carry. The key to making these work is sticking a piece of box tape along the top of each hand hold, to minimize paper cuts.
A lot of the professional moving boxes we got from my brother in law Blair, who just moved out to somewhere near Belleville, all have them and they just make your life that much easier.

After The Move Is Done

We have a long closing on our house, so there is no pressure to have the place completely empty and squeaky clean at the end of our moving day. In fact we have a couple of weeks.
So we have designated a day to patch holes and paint, and another couple of days to transport the stuff we don’t want the movers messing with. All their empathy not withstanding, they simply don't move all that many miniaturist artisans. The final day we have will be for cleaning.
We have done it this way, because during the closing period you have to sign in every 48 hours for insurance purposes. Certainly my kids can come by and do that and my wife’s pal Nina also volunteered as well. But we don’t want to overburden anyone.
So it all works out rather nicely. Even the weather looks like it’s going to cooperate.
So there you have it. The penultimate chapter of my moving to St Catharines saga. It’s been very stressful and very interesting. I learned a lot about real estate people and movers, and my own stress threshold.

As usual all likes (relevants), shares and comments are greatly appreciated.

If your business has reached the point where talking to a communication professional would be the preferred option to banging your head against the wall or whatever, lets talk.

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 https://onwordsandupwords.wordpress.com/2013/11/24/small-business-communications-for-the-real-world/

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