Mooooooooovin on up

Today is finally (FINALLY!) the last day I’m going to move my things out of my Burnaby apartment and into the new place. The gorgeous new place in Kitsilano, mere blocks from the beach, with the gigantic deck and the friendly neighbours and the fact that nearly everyone in the building owns a dog, including us. Oh, and the fact that I get to share it all with that boy I love (/end schmoop).

However, if there is one truth that anyone ever needed to know about me, it is this: I. HATE. MOVING.

I do somewhat enjoy unpacking, as well as the fun of setting up a new place exactly how I like it, and how shiny everything is when the new abode is freshly painted and scrubbed, and my stuff gets cleaned and rediscovered as it’s unpacked and put in its official place.

Everything else though, is torture. Finding a place is hellish. Dragging my possessions across town (including renting a truck and bribing friends) is a nightmare. Cleaning the old place for the new tenants is a completely unfulfilling chore – I hate cleaning for myself, why would I want to do it for anyone else? The time it all takes is just time I’ll never get back.

But the worst part, by far, is the packing. There is a special hell reserved for the rapists and child murderers in this world – and that hell is packing up my belongings. Comedian Dane Cook has a bit about how everyone has a sound (nails on a chalkboard, car alarms, etc.) that affects them so much, it makes them feel violent enough to want to punch a baby. That is how I feel about packing.

I’m not really a packrat in that I hang on to things because I’m afraid I will need them again someday, or think they may be useful at some point. It’s just that it’s so much easier to toss them into a cupboard or closet than actually get rid of them. I’ve been doing that for four years in the apartment I’m leaving, and I’m guessing that in the process of this latest move I’ve thrown out or given away nearly 40% of my possessions – some of which I never actually even unpacked after I moved in back in 2002.

I also foolishly thought that with the trip to Korea, and the crazy work schedule I was under, packing in time to move everything all in one day would be too much, so I’ve been doing it slowly over the past month.

Of course, doing it slowly in my world amounts to doing absolutely nothing for 3 weeks, then panicking for a week, and dragging boxes over carload by tiny carload.

But today the very last of the belongings that I’m moving with me are being put in the back of the J’Lo and toodling their way into Kits.

I’ve hired a cleaner to deal with the rest of the cruft, and I hand over the keys sometime in early August (my landlord lives out of town). Then begins the (only slightly) less torturous task of finding spaces and places for it all. Fitting over 2500 square feet of two people’s belongings into 2/5 of that space is not an easy undertaking.

At least it’s all over soon you say? At least I’ll be settled and can get on with another long stint in the place that I call home? I wish. We get to do it all over again in a year when this is finished.

I’m already saving for professional movers AND PACKERS to deal with it the next time around. That is, if in the meantime, the thought of it all doesn’t drive me screaming into the ocean that I moved to be closer to, never to be seen again.

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