The Great Moving Conundrum
We will be moving soon.
I’m super good at moving. Like really good. I won’t say how many times we’ve moved, but it’s been a lot. Most of them have been to different and better homes in the same city or area, but no matter how far you are going moving is hard.
Moving is like being crushed by a giant anvil. An anvil that doesn’t let up until you escape from your old home and shut the door on your new one. There are very few times when I’ve been as tired as I am when I move.
Going to the store for the first time one week after having a c-section is pretty close. But luckily, that torture only lasts as long as it takes to buy milk and eggs and breastfeed your screaming infant in the bathroom. Also, you can sneak and buy a bag of mini chocolate bars to hide in your underwear drawer.
Unfortunately, your underwear drawer gets packed when you move. Goodbye secret “hide-y” places.
At first, moving is kind of exciting. Your mind enters “the zone” where moms go to figure out how to do it all while still taking care of ordinary everyday things. You see the date approaching, and you just want to start already. But wait…
You need your stuff. You stare around your house and think,
“What do I not need that I can pack right now.”
Nothing.
It’s horrible.
You have this sudden need for EVERYTHING. What if I need to make homemade bread at the last minute. You can’t possibly pack the bread machine you haven’t used in eight months.
The Tape dispenser? What if I need to tear a piece off and play with it? Or what if my 5-year-old needs to pull 2 yards off and drag it through the house?
I sit down and make a plan. First, pack the pictures…
And that’s it.
I seriously need EVERYTHING ELSE for the next month. Anytime I try to pack things early, I end up tearing into boxes. I end up ripping off perfectly placed packaging tape to find that one thing that I ended up needing.
Besides what to pack, the next most crucial plan I write out is what to eat. I will look through my cupboards and choose simple, easy-to-make meals that we can survive on during the weeks before and after the move. I gather the food and equipment that we need to fulfill this grandiose plan and stack it all in one cupboard marked “DON’T PACK.”
Then we don’t eat it.
None of it.
It just sits there while I haul in McDonald’s and pizza and pre-made salads from Walmart. Eventually, the meal list falls from its place of glory on the fridge, only to be thrown away as we de-trash the house in the last few days of moving.
I think the failure to cook factor is based on how heavy the “moving” anvil feels. No one wants to cook mac and cheese with a 200 lb block of stress pushing their aching feet towards the earth’s core.
So to all moms who have ever moved. It’s normal to feel exhausted.
It’s normal to struggle with how to box and when to box, and how to dig through the box to find what you shouldn’t have boxed.
It’s normal to be crazy. Just make sure you add “going crazy” to your to-do list. At least then you can postpone actually doing it until much later in the process, just like everything else on the list.
P.S
The shift manager sat down to add up the till. Wow, another record week. They’d never done this good in the whole 2.5 months that he’d been working there.
“Hey Joel,” he called without looking around. A head poked out of the washing bay.
“Yeah?”
“Hey, why do you think we’ve been doing so good lately. Is there, like, some sort of event going on?
“No man, it’s this lady. She’s got like a million kids, and she’s been coming in for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.” He cocked his head to the side.
“Are you talking about plant lady?” There had been this super weird woman coming in. She would order, then she would go stand by the large fake tropical plant display they had in the corner. And she wouldn’t just stand by it. She would crouch.
Having this conversation reminded him that he had wanted to go check out the plant. See what on earth she was doing over there all day long.
He went over and stared at the plant. It was dusty. They should probably clean it. As he looked at it, he noticed something. A glint of silver. He crouched down and moved one of the branches to the side. In the dark recesses where the plastic ends of branches entered the plastic-filled pot was a pile of mini chocolate bars.
She had a secret hide-y place for chocolate bars?
Here at the fast-food restaurant?
What on earth?
He grabbed a mini Reeces cup eating it as he stood up. No harm in letting her have a chocolate stash. Especially if he could participate on occasion. Right?He let the plant leaves fall back in place, covering the evidence of a desperate woman slowly going crazy.
