Moving With UPack: The Rest of The Story!

One year ago this week, my family moved from the 'burbs of Chicago to a small town outside Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Move number five.

It was our fifth move in twelve years.

This move was a lot different than our previous moves for one big reason: this was not a corporate relocation. We were choosing to move ourselves.

And the reason was simple: I hated it there.

When my husband convinced me to move from our beautiful home and neighborhood in Pittsburgh, I told him that I was giving this move two years. And if, at the end of two years I was not happy there, then we would move back home to Michigan.

During that two year period, we worked non-stop on the fixer upper house that we had purchased, pouring in over $30,000 dollars in renovations. I tried to settle in, really I did. I tried to find meaningful employment (bust!), I tried to branch out and meet new people. I tried to fit in at church. But every day it felt like it was a struggle. Living in a neighborhood where no one talked to each other or even gave a friendly wave. Living with all of the traffic of Chicago highways, but so far away from the city that we only visited two or three times a year. Living far from family.

I was so over it.

Rules at my husband's company had changed regarding living distance to offices. My husband could keep his position and continue to travel all over the Midwest. It no longer mattered where we lived. So last spring, we spoke to our realtor, put the house on the market, and got an offer from the first people to see it.

Then we began the process of packing up and moving on.

Like I said, this wasn't a corporate relocation, where they send packers and movers and a giant semi to haul it all away. We had to DIY this move to keep the expenses down.

Our future house was a downsize, and I knew we'd have to get rid of a lot of stuff before the move. I had a HUGE garage sale, getting rid of furniture, antiques, clothes, crafts, books, kitchen items, toys that we'd held on to for way too long. We pared down, and then pared down some more. I gave away a LOT.

And then I packed a lot. Systematically, of course. Everything was carefully wrapped and boxed and color coordinated. This was not my first rodeo! Room by room, I worked for weeks to get it all ready for the move.

We decided to use UPack for our move. My husband works in logistics, and he was pretty sure he could handle the measuring and loading. The trailer was dropped off, and we began the loading over a weekend.

Moving things into a trailer is like a giant game of Tetris. Everything has to be packed just so, in layers, with straps in place to keep it from shifting. Heavy things in the back end, lighter things in the front end.

Ed and my son, Luke, began the load. Luke recruited friends, God bless him. We paid two young men to help move the piano (a beast!).  The exhausting, back breaking work went on for a day. And then another day. I began to worry that we wouldn't finish in time. And I also began to worry that it wouldn't all fit.

We worked in to the night. The trailer was full, and we had to be out by the next morning when the new owners came for the final walk through.

And that's when my husband said "I'm calling it. It's not all going to fit."

Aaaaargh!

The house, for the most part, was packed and loaded. But the garage? No. There was no room.

How could this happen? I thought I gave away so much!

I have never seen my family as worn out as I'd seen us that night. We were exhausted, and we weren't even done.

I began to throw things on a pile in the yard. My husband asked "What are you doing?"

"I'm making a pile of things we can now throw away."

And we did. Perfectly good flower pots and garden tools and anything else that looked like we could replace it later. Onto the pile it went! We hauled to Goodwill, we hauled to dumpsters. We didn't care. It had to go.

The next morning, at the crack of dawn, my husband went to a UHaul and rented a small truck. He loaded the truck with everything left over in the garage and drove it to a storage facility, where he unloaded it for storing. Everything there could keep for a few weeks, until he was ready to drive it all from Chicago to our new home in Michigan.

The move was brutal, to say the least. We were stressed beyond belief. And yet, in spite of all that, we still presented the owners with a clean, pristine house for their walk through. I had fresh cut peonies in a jar on the kitchen window sill. The bathrooms were clean, every cabinet was wiped down, the refrigerator was empty and clean, the floors were vacuumed and swept. The yard was nice and the gardens were weeded and in full bloom.

We could have left a mess behind, as so many others have done for us in the past. But that's not how we roll.

I loaded every square inch of my car. My husband loaded every square inch of his car. My son loaded every square inch of his car.

And then we drove home to Michigan!

I took these photos at our first rest stop over the border.

I remember being so exhausted, and yet feeling so much joy that it brought tears to my eyes.

Home.

Tomorrow I will tell you the REST of the rest of the story!

Blessings, cafe friends!