Reasons I Hate Moving

Before you do anything, you have to organize all of your shit. I don't know about you, but I have a ton of seemingly random crap. You have to spend time going over what you have, figuring out what to keep and what to pitch. The less stuff you have to move the better, and while this step makes later steps easier, it's still a royal pain.

I don't keep a ready supply of boxes on-hand, just in case I need to box things at a moment's notice. I have some storage containers and some computer boxes, but I don't have the room to store all the boxes (even broken-down) I need to pack my stuff and move. This means scouring the world for boxes.

* You ask friends if THEY have spare boxes. This usually gets you a few boxes, often ones you lent to them when they moved. Boxes are usually in poor condition.

* You scour your office for spare boxes. These are usually computer boxes, or printer paper boxes. You get great quality boxes from here usually, but sometimes you have to sneak them past the office staff.

* You break-down and BUY boxes. I bought more plastic storage containers as they're more durable and will last longer.

Like I said in "Organizing", you throw a lot of stuff away. For me, that involves loading up boxes and bags of junk into my car and driving across my apartment complex to the single dumpster we have (it's a shitty complex). This is tedious and time consuming. It's just a pain. I'm practically moving the stuff I'm throwing out.

Putting everything you own into neat little boxes. In theory this isn't a problem, but you never have quite the right size of box, or things just don't quite fit right in the box and you end up with some boxes being over-stuffed, others with gaps in them, and sometimes you get boxes that only has one thing in it because nothing else fits with it.

Oh, and packing kitchen stuff SUCKS. I hate having to wrap everything in newspaper.

If you don't have movers do the hauling for you (I've only had one move like that, it was from CT to MI), chances are you're renting a U-Haul and doing it yourself. Now, if you're like most people I know, you are a danger to anyone around you when you drive anything larger than a pickup truck. So finding someone who can drive the truck in the first place is a royal pain in the ass.

Of course no truck ever works quite right. Every time I've had to move myself there's been some major defect with the truck. And the truck is usually dirty so all of your stuff gets caked in dirt and dust.

Before you put the stuff in the new place, you pobably want to clean everything just to be sure. I've never seen an apartment cleaned before I move in, despite always being charged for it when I move out.

And you have to clean the old place once all of your stuff is out. Even though you get charged anyway for cleaning, if you don't clean they'll charge you even more.

This is likely the cleanest the new/old apartment will ever be during your stay.

Oh my lord is it a pain to go through all the utilities, credit cards, banks, work documents etc to get your address changed. And then for weeks you're still getting mail sent to your old address, missing bills because despite telling them you moved, they ignore that and send bills off into the never-never. And the USPS, despite logging your change of address forms, will still not forward things to you.

Oh, and if you need to call to take care of the transfer, make sure it's during the 9-5 day, because they're gone after that. They assume that if you're moving, you must not be working either and just have tons of time during the day.

I list this separate from the regular utilities as getting Internet service seems to be a unique challenge when moving. Even though in an apartment it requires nothing more than for them to enable your line at the office-end, they still have to send someone out to your place to talk you through connecting to the walljack. You have to set up an appointment for this.

They'll show up on the day anywhere between 8am and 8pm. That is unless they don't show up at all and call a few days later apologizing. But you still have to take a day off of work to wait for them on the off-chance they show.

This is a bother only because it takes so long. I'll have unopened boxes for months following the move. And for all those months I'll wonder where the heck I put XYZ device I suddenly need.

I hope to stick it out longer than a year in this particular apartment, but I know in at least two years, I'll be doing it all over again.