Moving Out
/The moving out day started out with a flurry of activity (putting bedding into closets to be used on inflatable mattresses after the movers left) and walking around making sure there was blue tape on everything that was not going on the truck. The kitchen area was where we stored the boxes/padding we’d use for the few remaining items that would go in a car when we left the house for the last time (the space between the refrigerator and the cabinet…and then in kitchen cabinets that were otherwise empty). I set myself up a working area with my laptop and papers associated with the move day. The Regency bag was for plastic bags of small hardware as furniture was disassembled. I put each set in a Ziploc with a piece of paper indicating the furniture it would be reunited with in Missouri. Just before the mover was due to arrive, everything was as ready as I could make it. I walked down the driveway and the took a picture of our oak with Virginia Creeper – a Zen moment.
The mover and his 3 helpers arrived shortly thereafter and then the team to prepare the grand piano (and treadmill) for the move. They put mats down on the wood floor…would have put more if we were not going to replace the carpeting anyway. Ramps were improvised for the two steps down from our front door. They loaded into the side of the truck. Big boxes of moving blankets and a big hanger of huge rubber bands to hold them in place around furniture were brought it. A steady stream of boxes were taken to the truck on dollies. The rubber bands and shrink wrap were the two innovations most noticeable to me since my last long distance move in 1983 (Plano TX to Springfield VA…..now we’re doing Laurel MD to Springfield/Nixa MO). The piano was partially disassembled, padded and loaded onto the bottom part of the crate which had been built specifically for it in front of our house (the team’s van had a generator to power the tools!). The piano went to the truck on a 4-wheel dolly where the rest of the crate was assembled around it. Going down the ramp at our front door was a bit scary for me to watch but the team told me that it was relatively easy (there was a job they had that required taking a piano down a muddy hill which they categorized as awful/scary but even they the piano came through unscathed).
10 hours from when they started – everything to go on the truck was loaded and the big truck pulled away. The delivery date for our move in is a bit more than a week away…but a lot needs to happen in that week!
