Lara's Wanderings

Anyone who knows me knows I research ALOT and yet still manage to do things the hard way. Moving fro San Antonio, Texas to Jackson, Wyoming has been no different. Why? Because for some odd reason I refuse to do anything the way anyone in their right mind would do it. So here it me guide to moving the hard way:

1. Sell your current house while still living in it with 3 kids, an absent-minded professor, and a cat suffering from environmental allergies.
2. Stage your house like a magazine which then requires you to pick-up clutter every waking moment and repack-away the kitchen or remake all the beds a zillion times a day.
3. Pack for your move while trying to keep your house perfect.
4. Store all boxes in the garage with the only vehicle you own so that you can barely get in and out of the vehicle with the kids.
5. Schedule your mover’s pick-up day, your 3-day drive, the first day of work at your new job, the closing on the sale of your house, and the delivery of your belongings as close to each other as posible. What could ever go wrong?
6. Instead of packing so many boxes a day that you feel like crying, pack only four boxes a day. Of course, this means it will take you a month to pack a three-bedroom house, but quick and easy, this guide is not.
7. Buy the cheapest tape you can, and then practically laminate your boxes. Not only will your boxes be impossible to open without a box-cutter, they will also be nearly waterproof! (not really, but it seems like it should be)
8. Ignore all advice to put things in garbage bags. Garbage bags don’t stack. Everything that can fit in a box should go in a box so you can make Minecraft style stacks of boxes all over the house!
9. Do not buy wardrobe boxes. All the clothes ends up rumpled on the bottom of the box when you unpack anyway. Take your clothes off the hangers and roll them up like you are packing a suitcase (the way you SHOULD pack a suitcase!) and put them in a box. Neatly stack your hangers and put them in another box with pillows and other stuffed around them. This will ensure that you touch every item of clothing and decide to donate half of it so you don’t have to pack it the stuff you hate anyways.
10. Buy as many book boxes as you possible can for your stuff so you can stack them in tidy Minecraft mountains (see above). Use larger boxes, mirror boxes and such when necessary, but minimally.
11. Rush out and buy all the organizing stuff that you had meant to buy for years and organize your life as you pack.
12. Store most of the kids’t toys in plastic tubs so you can unpack and repack them daily. This does not count towards your four-a-day box-packing quota. It does save some tears, though… the kids’s tears I mean… not necessarily yours.
13. Use colored room labels and colored masking tape to label what room the boxes go in and permanate marker to write on the box top what is in the box. Then have a master list that you can post by the front door of what room each box color goes in so that when everyone refuses to look at the labels and asks you where the boxes go on moving day, you will be able to answer repetitively while entertaining three kids and keeping them out of the way.
14. Hire a big-name mover because you think they know what they are doing, but still end up with 10% of your inventory missing or broken.
15. And finally… discover that you will be living in the most beautiful place you have ever seen!