I have moved several times in my life – in fact, this is the 17th time in my life I’ve moved to a new residence. Granted, I wasn’t always responsible for packing and shifting everything, but the process leaves an impression nonetheless.
First of all, I’m much more a purger than a pack-rat. Since I have never known what it feels like to have a house as a permanent home, I just don’t tend to keep many things past their useful life. It’s not to say I’m not sentimental, but you tend to get pretty ruthless when it comes down to having to move things from place to place – not everything makes the cut. I’m also an excellent packer. I know not to pack books in large boxes and I like to use towels, blankets, etc as packing material – it all has to get moved anyway and by using soft items for cushioning, I’m also saving on volume. Stuffed animals are excellent buffers for fragile items 
I’ve only ever had the luxury of using professional movers a few times in my life – most of the rest of our moves were accomplished under our own steam. The first time was when my family moved from Wisconsin to Louisiana when I was four years old – mostly what I remember about that move is that the moving men had an eighteen wheeler truck and they let me sit up in the cab and play. Also, one of them made my sister a tiny horse saddle for one of the many model horses she had in her collection.
The second time I hired professional movers was when my husband and I moved from Cleveland, Ohio to North Carolina. Normally we’d have hired a U-Haul truck and done it ourselves but once I’d seen the warning on the sun visor in the truck about overheating brakes and possible brake failure on downhill slopes I didn’t much like the idea of driving the truck down through the mountains of West Virginia! That was a terrible move – we ended up camping in an empty rental house because the movers ended up being 10 days late. I called the company nearly every day to complain. When the truck finally did arrive, the movers refused to open the truck and unload our possessions until we had paid them! Several items were damaged as well. I ended up fighting the company and getting several hundred dollars back for delays and damage but I tell everyone I know not to use that particular company (though no one I tell has even heard of them so that probably says something right there!)
Our move to Cairo from the United Arab Emirates was a huge job. We’d been in the UAE long enough to have had two children and accumulate the possessions of a family of four. And it wasn’t as easy as just packing up – every box had to be inventoried in detail so that the university could write the customs authorities in Egypt a letter of guarantee so we would not have to pay duty on our things. In short, everything we bring in, we take out. Being a librarian by education I went a little overboard on the itemizing – I kick myself when I see “Mr. Potato Head” on the list when I could have just written “toys”!
The only bad part of our Cairo move was the aftermath: I ended up rupturing a disk while unpacking all of our many boxes. Six months in bed sounds like a lot of fun until you can’t do otherwise. Ouch.
My back has since recovered and at last check my other disks were in reasonable shape, but I wasn’t anxious to injure myself again. The university would have moved our boxes for free if I packed them, but not our personal furniture. So when the moving company I called about the furniture offered to pack everything, move it, and unpack for what was a mere pittance in the grand scheme, I decided it was worth it. Honestly, the move last week went so much better than I expected. I’ve never let anyone else pack all of my things before and they did a great job all the way around. They moved my stuff, they took a couple of large potted plants to the apartments of friends of mine, they retrieved the TV satellite off the roof, and they installed my washing machine. The whole time they were at it, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop – they were going to tell me that the move was a bigger job than they expected and I owed them more, for instance. In fact, they finished up and left and never even asked me to pay! It wasn’t until the next day that the owner of the company called me and arranged to come over and collect the fee – which was exactly what he had quoted me.
It was totally worth the money and the twenty five tea bags and kilo of sugar the five guy crew consumed in their tea breaks over two days!!
I’m busy nesting now and making the new place our own – and really hoping I don’t have to face packing up and moving for at least a couple of years!
