Smooth Move

So how does one go about moving across country? In our case, v e r y slowly. Since we plan to maintain a presence in Bellevue, our move is not as simple as packing everything we own into a few hundred boxes and then simply vacating the city. And since our house in Maryland is already furnished, albeit with a lot of other people’s cast offs, we don’t have the pressure to fill it with our own cast offs.

Our older daughter just graduated and our younger daughter graduates in about a year. As the older one moves off to college, we will begin the process of fixing up our house to put it on the market about the time our younger one graduates. Much of that time, we’ll only have two people in the house, so the process should be fairly smooth. The hitch is that there will still be times when all five of us will be in Bellevue together, so we can’t move too much too quickly eg. beds, kitchen tables. Among those items that must not move yet are our vast collection of VHS/DVDs and our two cats.

We have lived in this house for 16 years. We aren’t pack rats, but we have still accumulated too much stuff! I’ve been going through drawers and cabinets trying to determine what and how much we have. I’m going to try to consume all the consumables and give away much of the forgotten wares.

We have measured every piece of furniture that we own in Bellevue, and we are working on a plan to determine where it will all go. Our favorite sectional sofa won’t fit in Maryland, so it goes to the unpurchased condo. Our old desk is not needed in Maryland, so it will go on Craigslist. Our old china cabinet that is an antique family heirloom will find a new home in my brother’s house near St. Louis. Our daughter is going to college in Massachusetts, but we haven’t determined where her stuff will go. And on and on it goes.

We still have to figure out how to physically get everything that’s moving from here to there. I looked at movable containers. We load them, they ship them, we unload them at the other end. We are also considering buying a new truck then renting a trailer to move our own containers across country. It will take several trips, but it allows us to move items as we are ready and when we have the time. If we get a cellular internet card, we might even be able to work while we move. And since I have three brothers who live between here and there, we can even vary our route each time to see family along the way.

First things first, though. Sort, pitch, sell, save, decide. There is no easy way to do this other than to jump in and start doing it.