The Joys of Moving

Ah moving: a terrible, unavoidable part of life.

I was watching Seinfeld last week and I think Jerry really summed up my recent feeling on the process of finding boxes when he said:

When you're moving you're whole world becomes boxes.  That's all you think about is boxes.  Boxes, where are those boxes?  You just wander down the street going in and out of stores... are there boxes here?  Have you seen any boxes?  You can't even talk to people because you can't concentrate... shut up, I'm looking for boxes!  

- Seinfeld (The Boyfriend).

It really got me thinking about the stress of moving and as I consider myself a bit of a moving pro (8 moves in 5 years!) there are some patterns that I have begun to notice about myself, and they are:

I get rid of ALL my shit (only to move and realize I have nothing)

Does anyone else do this?  I am so disgusted by the idea of organizing, sorting, packing, moving, stacking, driving, unpacking, re-organizing that I would rather give everything away than deal with it (especially this time, since the drive to Calgary is rather daunting.)  Then, every time without fail, as I am unpacking I suddenly realize I have no couch, no TV, no anything.  The decision to rid myself of everything usually occurs while repeating the mantra: We will buy new stuff for our new place, we will buy new stuff for our new place.  No, we won't get new stuff when we move and you know why?  'Cause moving is goddamn expensive!  Especially when relocating to a new city since there is always some amount of time that passes before settling into a new job, so by the time I'm finally making an income I've accumulated some form of debt.  By the time I am settled in with nice, new furniture, its probably time to move again... and so begins a vicious cycle.

I become very aware of how much garbage has been sitting in my house

I don't mean crappy things, I mean the literal amount of GARBAGE that gets thrown away.  After going through all my drawers, under the bed, etc I had two garbage bags full of crap.  We're talking receipts from 5 years ago, crumpled up scrap paper, used Q-tips, pens that don't even work, cords that do not go with any electronics; and that's not even counting the boxes and boxes of items that I deem actually worthy enough to donate.  To think that this garbage has just been scattered about my home the last year, accumulating and growing larger, makes me feel like I'm in hoarder territory.

I come to the realization that there will always be a large sum of money that I will never get to spend

I'm talking about the damage deposit, which can be a lot of money.  In our current home it's $1000, but some of the landlords in Calgary ask for $2250 deposit!  That is money I will never get back.  Assuming I was a good little tenant and incurred no damage on my rental unit, therefore receiving my deposit back in its entirety, it would still go straight into my next landlords hands.  Yes, you could say, "But Francesca, what if you go travelling or decide to buy a house?" to which I would say, "Those circumstances do not apply to my situation so shut up."

I don't find a place to live until the very last minute

And this is true of almost every time I have moved, it'll be a week until my moving day and I STILL don't have a new place line up.  Moving to Victoria for September 1st?  Forget about it!  One fall, Linda and I applied to every listing we could find a week before our moving day and when the beginning of the school year rolled around we found ourselves living in low income housing and yet still paying $1200/month.  The way things have been going this month, methinks it will be much the same.

There are boxes in my possession that NEVER get unpacked

And I mean never.  It doesn't matter how long I've lived in my home, there are certain boxes that contain items that I just didn't know what to do with, so I never get around to unpacking them.  In fact, I completely forget about them until my next move (in my case about 6 months later, so not a biggie).

And finally...

I suddenly become bipolar

The whole moving process is super stressful and I swear off moving ever again.  Then once I've unpacked, settled in and things return back to normal, suddenly I start longing for a fresh start, and thus the never ending cycle of moving (or am I alone on this one?)

Well, those are my moving truths!  What are yours?