Who doesn’t love a moving disaster?

It was so well planned, our move from Harmony Hill Cottage- the name of our first lake house. Really, it was. Matt is a planner and he’s good at it. Looking back, there were a lot of… obstacles… that led to the demise of this moving experience. It certainly was not our finest moment, but I’m hoping that sharing the ugly parts of this journey can help someone avoid a total cluster of a day like we experienced on April 29th.

The first problem…

The closing for both houses did not coincide with one another. That would have been GREAT if the new house had closed before the old house and we could have moved everything right in- these two houses are really only 4 miles apart. But, of course, you know that’s not the order in which things transpired or this blog post would have a different title. The buyer of our house was insistent on closing by April 30th and we made that happen, or at least we tried. It actually didn’t close that day but not for something we did or didn’t do- real estate law in New York seems to move extremely slowly.

The seller of the other house- our new-to-us cottage- had a lifetime of stuff to remove from the house, a septic system failure by the health department, and then a subsequent need to remedy the failure at the seller’s cost. A septic system costs somewhere in the realm of $25,000 to replace- so that wasn’t happening. After the seller weighed their options for a week, they began converting the septic tank into a holding tank which has to be professionally pumped when it is full. I know– it’s gross. We’re not too worried because we will be able to tie into new sewers that are being put in within the next year (or so we’re told!). It’s better than having the seller default on the sale of the house- that was our worst fear when the septic failed. Long story short- our stuff was going to be homeless.

That means we got a storage unit. Make that two. Oh wait…

Next problem: We. Have. So. Much. Stuff. And I’m not sure we realized just how much stuff we’ve accumulated over 3 years in the house. What we forgot to factor-in to reserving storage was that we did not move into an empty house in 2016. The previous owner left everything. Everything. Furniture, dishes, a lawn mower– yep! Which was great at the time when we were furnishing a second house, not so great when you’re moving it into storage on a time crunch. We didn’t keep it all, either; our sweet, first realtor arranged for Salvation Army to come and take whatever we didn’t want. She was awesome- she even brought us a pizza for lunch the day we moved in <3.

Anyway, that means we had more possessions than we bargained for in our initial planning. Not to mention that the storage company was out of 10 x 10 units and so they gave us two 5 x 10 units. While that equals the same square footage, the logistics of packing items into a 5 foot wide space versus a 10 foot wide space creates yet another issue. Without another option, Matt had to contact the storage company to request a third storage unit and got the confirmation literally as he pulled the moving truck into the driveway of the storage facility with the final load. Even with the third storage space, we still had to bring some things to our home in Cleveland. Rest assured, I will be limiting what’s allowed into the new lake house when we can finally move things in.

Another snag in the plan- our current realtor called before we made it to New York that morning…

Well, actually he texted telling Matt he wanted him to call. Matt was driving and the baby was asleep in the back so I texted back to ask what he needed. He sent this picture:

What you may or may not notice is cracked PVC pipe that encases electrical wiring alongside our well- most places surrounding the lake have well water. We needed to repair it or have it repaired before the sale of the house could be finalized. Normally, this is something Matt could do and he wanted to. He really thought we might be finished in time for him to do it- but you know that wasn’t the case. We had to leave with it unfinished and we called a plumber to come out and fix it the next day.

I’m not sure why the inspection was taking place the day before we were supposed to close- if something went wrong, which it did, it only gave us a day to fix it. Should we have called the plumber that day? Sure, but we wanted to save money and we like to do anything within our skill set on our own. But then we were also the ones who were moving an entire household of belongings the day before closing, which leads me to the next item that was stacked against us and our move.

Our schedule had unavoidable, unmovable commitments…

Matt and I are both musicians and teachers. I’m currently on maternity leave but I still sing with the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus. That particular weekend I had rehearsal Friday night and Saturday morning, a performance Sunday afternoon, and rehearsal again Monday evening- one of the last two rehearsals of the season without the orchestra. Matt took a personal day that Monday to move since there wasn’t enough time during the weekend with my rehearsal and performance schedule, but I still had rehearsal that night. Matt had invited his parents to come and help us move and watch the kids while we loaded the U-Haul- and thank goodness. The plan was to drop me off at rehearsal on our way home from New York, leave my car with me, and then the rest of the family could ride home in his parents’ minivan.

The point of no return came with only enough time to drive back and run through a drive-thru, but we weren’t close to being done. I had to leave before they were finished and I can’t explain my inner conflict at that moment. I called my mom on the way to Erie, PA for a therapy session. I ate my feelings through the Burger King drive-thru- a Whopper with cheese- for which my stomach did not forgive me for an entire week. They left New York about an hour and a half behind me and actually didn’t get to our house until after I did. The baby complained, rhythmically of course, after their meal stop- all but the last half hour before home. It was a “no good, very bad” day.

You might be thinking, “Why didn’t you do this a weekend earlier?” And that is a great idea! Unfortunately, that didn’t work for us either. Matt had his own concerts and student adjudications to attend and to prepare for so we went to the lake the only two times we had within the window we were given by our real estate lawyer.

So, what would we do differently?

First of all, I never want to move again. But if we were given a mulligan on this day, here’s what we would change:

1. Pack items ahead of time– we actually did this, at least part of the way. Matt and I had gone on our own with no kids or family (this would be the second time I mentioned above, which was actually the first, haha), and we sold two lawn mowers (why we had two is a story for another day), packed up the kitchen, cleaned out the shed, disassembled the beds, plastic wrapped the mattresses- we did a lot, but not enough. There were two closets that we didn’t pack up and that was a big mistake. Oh! And a cleaning/paper products pantry. Places like that hide a lot of little things that you don’t even think that you have. On our moving day, those ended up being the last things I did and they should have been the first, because by the end we were out of boxes and I was cramming everything haphazardly into plastic shopping bags. The garage also had a lot of forgotten items, like an entire dining table and chairs. Big mistake.
2. Ask for help– we’re not good at this if you hadn’t already inferred based on our failure to just call a plumber for the broken PVC pipe. Matt’s parents were a huge help- my mother-in-law sat with our baby in her arms on the hardwood floor in an empty bedroom so he could sleep– twice. My father-in-law lifted all of the heavy things with Matt. They were great, but things would have gone faster if we had just asked for more help. My parents were available that day and I didn’t ask. My dad has a pick-up truck and a trailer- a trailer which he’d purchased an extra set of tires for in case he needed to make a long trip, like say, a trip to New York. The extra hands would have made all the difference. They did have an ailing parent during that time, so we were trying to give them freedom in case they needed to travel to my grandmother or we would have asked.
3. Block out plenty of time, as in days– this one was the hardest for us to do. It would have been nice if we could have picked an earlier weekend, but as I mentioned above, that weekend was not the only weekend we had commitments. The normal school week also had commitments- the preparation for concerts and events- not to mention that we have two young children. Ideally, I would make the effort to block out more time and never would I ever again try to do it in one day.
4. This point might be just for me, but I would have called off of rehearsal that Monday evening– we can do that. What got me was that I would be doing it last minute and that didn’t sit well with me; it was a mental block. Feeling like I abandoned my family didn’t sit well with me either. Someday, maybe I will learn that I can’t do everything even if I want to do everything.
5. Take a detailed inventory of your belongings, especially if you have to move them into storage– I would go so far as to measure your items as well. Measure big pieces of furniture, have all of your packing materials in advance so you can get more if you run out, and you will most likely run out. Then measure the packed containers before you have a moving truck in your driveway. Even if you’re not moving things into storage, you’ll at least know the size of truck you’ll need and how many trips you require. This also would have saved us so much time. It is worth mentioning that the truck we rented was the size U-Haul said was ideal for a two bedroom house- it was not.

In the end, I’m not sure there’s much we could have changed but those are the things we would have changed looking back on the experience. As with anything, it was about finding the time to prepare and get it done without nearly having a nervous breakdown. I just wish I had the chance to say goodbye to the house, thank it for all of the great memories, and to catch all of my favorite views of the lake from Harmony Hill one last time.

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