A Home Buyer and Seller’s Journey- Part 8: Moving Days

I am a freelance copywriter who happens to work with many real estate agents. This is my experience selling and purchasing my third home.

We’ve moved five times in the twelve years we’ve been together. The other moves, we’ve DIY the move. This one we hired loading help and had a company drive our belongings to Columbus. You’d think packing and unloading would be easy, with all our experience.

Nope. This was the most stressful move yet because this time we have an almost three-year-old. We spend weeks preparing everything, getting rid of non-essentials, paring down clothes. But we still had a monumental task ahead when we arrived back from vacation.

We were lucky enough that the in-laws lived close enough to take the kid and watch him while we finished the final deconstruction of our stuff and moved out. It was much less stressful once he was out of the house because we could both focus instead of entertain.

Loading

For the move out, we had to beat a serious storm system moving into the Lexington area. I had most things staged in stacks 2–3 boxes high in the garage and the big stuff was all taken down and ready to go.

Our loaders, College Hunks, were on top of it. IThey rolled in, had a plan, and went for it. Most of the garage was cleared out within half-an-hour. It was amazing. Everything major was in the truck before the first pellets of rain. Mostly, it was cleaning supplies left out.

We did leave the truck bed open while we cleaned. The first wave of rain rushed in. Until Alan realized our truck is parked with the open bed facing down hill. Whoops. Yes, big puddles of water were in the truck and running towards the front, under all our stuff.

There was nothing we could do about it but sop up the water we could and close the door. Our other saving grace is it was going to be very cold for the next six days that our stuff lived on the truck. At least it wouldn’t grow mildew.

Moving In

Our buyers had until 7pm Friday to vacate the property, but agreed to let us park the moving trailer early on Friday because the company wouldn’t deliver on Saturday. We had to be there at 2pm to sign for it.

They were still there, but definitely in the last stages. Just one car, a trash bag out front, hatchback open. They were generous enough to clean up before we moved in. The buyer also helped Alan back the camper into the garage and off-load my rowing boat.

Our buyer’s agent stopped by to ensure everything was going to plan and to pass off the key.

The sellers wrapped up by 5pm and we had our first dinner-mover’s delight, pizza-in our new home.

We planned to camp out in the house for the first night. Unfortunately, I forgot to make the sleeping bags and air mattress accessible in the moving truck and the camper. We used the moving blankets and a few other blankets I found to create our beds on the floor.

We hired two unloaders from a local independent company to help for three hours. Now that we had a home with stairs, we figured we’d need the assistance.

My job was to keep the kid out of the way while they navigated up and down the stairs with our stuff. Within a few hours, the trailer sat empty and boxes were stacked around the house. Move, complete!

Originally published at http://mcmowrites.com on May 15, 2020.