The first time my husband and I moved was two days after our honeymoon. We loaded up a trailer with our wedding gifts and other odds and ends and set off to drive three hours to where Derek had lived. We picked up another load of stuff and headed another three hours to our new home in the Dallas area.
It was a long day, made even longer because we were pulling a trailer. When we finally made it to our new apartment, the sun was setting, but humidity hung in the air, and I knew we’d have a long night ahead.
Load by load, we took armloads of our stuff up three flights of stairs to our apartment. It took a few hours, a couple of disagreements and a lot of hard work. Nothing was organized. We packed things in trash bags that tore. We made a pile in our living room, and even still, we were missing another load of furniture and clothes that my parents had packed up for us after our wedding and were planning to bring to us.
We spent about a week sleeping on an air mattress and ate dinner off an overturned box with a tablecloth on it. Our TV stand was a storage box, and our first showers uncomfortably didn’t have shower curtains.
So when Derek got the call that we would be moving for his job temporarily, we readied ourselves. I made a master inventory list and started categorizing our belongings. We donated or trashed things and started packing about three weeks before our move. Although this time we decided to hire a mover, we weren’t off the hook.
There were still items we would have to pack ourselves and the apartment needed a good last cleaning. Unlike me, however, Derek is easygoing about these kinds of things. He doesn’t stress about when we’ll get the cleaning and painting done or how we’ll box up those items on the last day. I, on the other hand, need a plan and timeline for when those things will get done, especially since the last weeks of living in Dallas were marked by our vacation and another trip to visit his family.
It drove me crazy that my husband didn’t seem worried about getting everything finished until I realized I had to trust him. He’s my husband and he’s promised to take care of our family, and I have to have faith that together, we will take care of those details.
Secondly, I had to understand that things will go wrong. With boxes filling our dining room and my office, we’ve realized that we’ve packed things we needed and have had to go fishing in those packed boxes for things like tape. I can’t expect moving day to be any more perfect.
What I can do is pray for a smooth transition to our new home. And that someone remembers the shower curtains.
FEATURED CONTRIBUTOR:
Amanda Casanova is a writer living in Texas with her amazing husband. She is a Texas A&M University graduate and has worked for several newspapers in Texas. She blogs at amandacasanova.wordpress.com and is a writer for Whole Magazine.
