Over the weekend we moved!
To Brooklyn. (Please say it like in You've Got Mail, you know what I'm referring to.) It was probably our most seamless move yet, and that is saying something--all told Brandon and I have moved... yikes, eight (!!) times in the eleven (!!!!) years we've been married. Some were cross-country, some were cross-neighborhood, some were just across the apartment complex because we'd found a better layout, every time it's always a hassle. Right? We moved around a lot when I was a kid, too. Big moves (to Connecticut, to Oregon, to South Korea), and I always thought that I hated moving, but it turns out I actually
like moving. Not the packing up part. The packing up part isn't so great for those like me who are bad at Tetris-type situations, but the unpacking! Oh yes. Weirdly, unpacking totally gets me going. Over the years I've gotten to be pretty good at setting up and setting up
fast. (Holy junk
my first ever post was about this very thing.) (Wow I was a much better writer back then.) This weekend was like a 48-hour-long Christmas morning. It gave me a total high. And now that the dust has settled and we're square in the part of moving where you're constantly waiting around for the cable guy to show up, I figured I'd impart unto you a few of my trickiest tips picked up over our years of moving all our junk into various different places. You're
so ready, Freddy.
1. GET RID OF YO JUNK
Moving gets exponentially harder the more you own, and one thing New York City has taught me that I've been so grateful to learn is how to live small. Super small. We own the barest of essentials because we just can't bear to part with the space for anything we don't absolutely love or need consistently. Moving is a great opportunity to pare down your household. Streamline your operation! I can't say enough how important it is to clear through your things before a big move. Broken mechanical pencils and kitchen appliances you never really use will take up a lot of valuable box real estate, will add five minutes to your packing time and five minutes to your unpacking time, and then you'll just have to find another place for it... yuck. Expel the crap. I like to think of each item I own as a unit of effort. A special quilt made by my grandmother is worth a lot of my effort, but maybe not so much those throw pillows I got at T.J.Maxx or wherever that I don't really love anymore. Attack your home room by room, and be merciless. Sell or donate as much as you can. Take nothing with you you won't be thrilled to unpack. (We recently donated all the DVDs of every movie we owned that we could easily find on Netflix or Amazon Prime. Game changer.)
2. GET CREATIVE
We like a styrofoam bowl or plate stacked between each of our breakable bowls and plates. Hair ties are good for keeping your utensils together. Bottles of perfume and delicate jewelry go in your socks, fragile lamps can be wrapped inside bathroom towels. Full rolls of toilet paper + paper towels are great padding for the rest of your breakables. Same goes for throw pillows + blankets.
3. CUT DOWN ON WASTE
Boxes are a pain! And they're expensive. And they're a hassle to get rid of once you're in and unpacked. We try as hard as we can to reduce waste by making good use of suitcases, gym bags, tote bags, ziploc bags... anything. Oh! Keep all your clothes in their dressers! (And then get help carrying those dressers in and out because that's heavy...) We try to save the boxes for things that actually benefit from being boxed, like books, glassware, dishes and electronics. And really, go easy on the tape. You're gonna want to be able to get in fast, and also, tape wads are way more obnoxious to deal with in my experience than newspaper piles.
4. KEEP ALL YOUR ESSENTIALS TOGETHER AND UNPACK THEM FIRST
Set aside a box or bag for all your immediate needs and mark it so you won't misplace it. Inside, pack two days' worth of clothing for everyone in your house, the entire contents of your shower, all your medications and chargers and iPads that stream Netflix, and whatever else you need to survive for two days. Pack full sets of bedding in giant trash bags--sheets, pillows, duvet--one for each bed in the house, and plan to put those together first. More than anything else you'll want a hot shower, something cozy to wear, and a nice, clean bed to sleep in at the end of your long moving day.
5. YOUR NEXT PRIORITY IS THE KITCHEN
Never enter a new home without having in your possession: 1. A 12-pack of Diet Cokes (or, you know, whatever floats your boat), 2. All the makings for an emergency PBJ (including a utensil for spreading!), 3. A bag of mini Snickers. Because. Put it in the fridge. Cold mini Snickers will save you! And, 4. Toilet paper. Okay the toilet paper isn't for the kitchen. But, really. Don't forget some TP.
6. YOU UNPACK, HE UNLOADS
Or, however. The point is: Divide and conquer! We always designate an unpacker and an unloader and I am always the unpacker, hash tag spaghetti noodle arms. I like to think of myself as a kind of drill sergeant when it's time to unload. I get very bossy. As soon as the kitchen boxes are in I take my post, unwrapping every. stinking. glass. one. at a time, while Brandon (and whatever kind souls are helping us move) finishes unloading the truck. In between stacking plates I bark at him and tell him where to put things. By the time everything's in, the kitchen's already in good shape, and you are free to move on to something else. Having an operating kitchen might be the only thing keeping you from hunger-induced tantrums every other hour, you know, or is that just me? When I get snippy I know it's time to take a quick break for a handful of mini marshmallows. Then I'm good to carry on.
7. KEEP UP THE MOMENTUM AND JUST GET IT DONE
In my experience, you're never more motivated to unpack than you are the first few days in your new home. The minute you stop, things tend to settle, and it gets pretty easy pretty quickly to just get used to living out of boxes. The longer I put something off the harder it is to get it done--are you that way too? So I try and have it all done and unpacked before the upcoming Monday. Mondays seem like a sort of a natural deadline, don't they? And it's much easier for me to feel motivated when I've set some parameters for myself. Also, the more empty boxes I get out of the way the more I feel like I'm getting somewhere and the more I'm motivated to keep going, so get it all out of the house as soon as you can so you can really see the progress you're making. (This is all easier said than done, and I'm lucky to only have 15 or so boxes to unload when we move. For a bigger home, I'm all out of ideas. My hat's off to you guys.)
8. WHEN IN DOUBT, HIRE MOVERS
We'd never hired movers before, but this time we decided to do the grown up thing and budget for a team of movers.
Worth. It. Even when I was a kid I could tell that the moves we made with a team of professionals ran about fifty times more smoothly than the DIY-ers. We used
FlatRate for this move, and here's my funny story about
FlatRate, are you ready? On our train ride home after meeting with our broker to see what was to become our Exposed Brick Apartment of Destiny (naming your home is important, guys, and kind of hard... and I don't know if that's quite it yet...), we found ourselves a seat right across from
this ad on the F train, and it was hilarious, and also, like, the fourth time the cosmos had knocked me on the head that day to say "DUMMY! PAY ATTENTION!" So, clearly I had found my moving company. (I
did do my due diligence and research reviews on Yelp.) I contacted them, they sent a dude over to assess our place, he quoted me a flat rate (get it?) and then that's what I paid and not a penny more. It's common out here for movers to bill you for parking tickets or bridge tolls or unexpected extra man hours ("unexpected" being the operative word here). (I've heard of moves that came out $700 above-quote, so a
flat flat rate was hugely reassuring.) First thing in the door our lead mover looked at Huck and said,
Hey! I could really use your help! Huck was so thrilled he could have burst, and right there he'd already made it worth our money.)
Well, so that's all I got.
Here are a few photos from the weekend! (I know! How could there possibly be more!?)
A final parting shot of the old hood. (Who am I kidding? It's actually quicker to get to our favorite spots downtown from here than it was from our old neighborhood, I keep reminding myself when I start to feel homesick.) (Homesick?)
The first thing to go down was the rug. You know how you sometimes think something is bigger than it really is, and you blow it way out of proportion in your head? That's what Brandon thought was going on with me, and then the rug went down, and he was like, Oh crap. Because that rug used to take up our whole living room. We are still pinching ourselves.
Our dinner table in progress. Brandon hung our tasseltry all haphazardly on the wall like that to get it out of the way, and I liked it so much, it stayed! I haven't even straightened it out yet! But I really should straighten it out eventually.
Here comes the furniture! And Barry! Is this an exciting play by play or what!?
Child labor laws, whatever. Get up, lazy!
I rounded the corner after finishing in the kitchen to this adorable set up. The movers had done it--those plants! I never would have thought to do it this way, but I've really loved it, and it's stayed, too. Making zero decisions looks really good on me, I'm going to (not) do it more often.
We took a roof break that evening once things were settling and discovered these beehives and a small urban garden tucked away in an unexplored corner, and we were like,
What is this place, Narnia!?
Oh hi, Lady Liberty. Very high quality photo, thumbs up phone.
And two quick peeks of our apartment as of Sunday night.
Can't wait to show you the rest of it! Thanks for taking us, Brooklyn!
