Moving Pains

We are just emerging from the misery of moving house. There is a famous old saying that nothing is worse for most of us than moving, except death and divorce. I’m not so sure, it was not all that bad. But it certainly was no fun. And the experience is so fixed at the top of my mind that it has to be the subject of a blog. I’ll try to make it not too depressing, and maybe there are some lessons for others buried deep in the experience.

I think the main reason why our family found this move so difficult mentally is that there was no positive story about it. Last year we accomplished the much tougher feat of moving from Europe to the USA: this time we scarcely shifted a mile. But the move last year was part of a life changing adventure. We were excited, a little daunted, and distracted, and our energy level was high. Many moves have such a positive backdrop: perhaps you are moving in with a partner, or trading up to somewhere nicer or embarking on a new job.

This move had no such context. Moving was forced upon us by our landlord selling up. We had not sought to move. We liked where we were. The market had gone up so we struggled to even maintain a place as nice as our previous one. Add in the darkest weeks of the year and some cold and snow last week, and you can understand the dark context further.

So that is my first lesson. Look for the positive storyline, and create one even if it is rather manufactured. A good feeling about an adventure papers over a lot of sore backs and unpleasant surprises.

The move itself we handled relatively easily. I suppose we had done it many times before and had learned a few lessons. Moreover we were not on a particularly tight budget. We know that moving furniture and carrying boxes are jobs for the experts. I marvel at the strength of professional movers, and their superb spatial awareness. My wife and I can both stare at the problem of fitting a piece of furniture through a door and come up with different wrong answers. These guys just get the job done.

So the second lesson is not to pretend you can do more than is sensible. Packing stuff into boxes is not a big problem, and it is amazing how few things break even if your packing is a bit lazy. But pay for pros to do the heavy stuff. Your mood will be dark enough and your back will ache enough without making it worse. I was never fit and now I am not young either. We got plenty of help, but my back still hurts after a week, and I am falling asleep at nine every night: I have missed the end of the last four TV NFL evening games.

Moving teaches you a lot about teamwork, especially with your partner or housemate or whoever is sharing the load with you. Teamwork is easy when the problem is fun and everyone is motivated and has energy. Moving has few of those advantages, so you have to work harder at it. It is obvious that a good team will allocate the tasks according to their respective strengths. It is also obvious that complements and treats go down especially well when everyone is under pressure. But I also learned that we measure progress in different ways. For me, it is critical to tick off milestones and to get rid of as many boxes as possible as quickly as possible, even at the expense of needing to revisit things again later. My wife prefers to make each part of the house perfect the first time.

A good lesson would have been to work this out in advance, or even just to recall it from previous arguments over moves. Then we could each have adjusted our approach subtly to please each other.

It also helps the team if you can find a way to relax and to celebrate together. We ate out with a bottle of champagne on the first evening. Relaxing things are especially helpful, since everyone is stressed. I found the routine of Church services and concerts powerful in the days around the move; maybe meditation and massage might work for others.

Some moving lessons are quite well documented but nonetheless easily forgotten. First come basic project management principles, especially as regards critical path analysis. The morning the movers arrive you need to be ready, not just nearly ready. The day you hand over the keys the place must be cleaned and empty. When you move in you need electricity. It is surprising how many items are not time critical, yet we spend precious time on them. Also, you always start slow and speed up and then run out of time. Some early effort on time critical tasks will repay later.

Another lesson is about what might be called critical items. Most of us can work out to put our valuable things somewhere under full control, but perhaps our kids need coaching of the same skill. We can probably also work out that having a suitcase of clothes, toiletries and so on for the changeover days makes sense, almost as though preparing for a holiday. But there are other items to add to the critical list. Cleaning things and extension cords are two examples. No doubt there are good lists on Google.

 A clear lesson is about throwing things away. We tend to make the mistake of postponing chuck outs, even thinking we can achieve a good chuck out during a move. There is no time for that! We have just packed the same junk into boxes that we packed an unpacked a year ago, and now it is cluttering up yet another house. For most of us, chucking only works as a regular thing, a bit like dieting. True, a blitz can achieve a lot, but without good everyday habits things will get worse anyway. I think it is also good logic to think hard before buying bulky things. We understand the dimension about value for money, but what about value for space? There is another useful comparison with holidays here: a 20kg mentality for purchases is a healthy thing.

Even following all these lessons, there will be difficult days and disasters will occur. Something will be unexpectedly deficient in the new place. Maybe like us you will welcome your new abode by blocking the toilet, to gain acquaintance with the wonderful devices available to unblock them. Or, also like me, you can misunderstand how a door locks, and find yourself outdoors in your bedroom slippers in below freezing temperatures. Look on the bright side. It is a good way to meet the neighbours, you made their day, and you can laugh at all your misfortunes for years to come.

Finally, for a fanatical observer of firms like me, moving offers many gems. I wonder if anyone managing Home Depot has ever actually visited Home Depot. As a handyman, the experience my be tolerable, but the place is marketed for regular humans too and it just does not measure up. For 80% of the store, people like me would need staff help, yet finding staff is almost impossible. If you want to make a bad day worse, call on Home Depot! And surely, in the days of the internet, a place like that ought to work out that personal service is essential, and that we would pay enough for it to make it worth their while.

I also bought a computer. Best Buy sold me a bundle, that required me to log onto a website that did not exist to activate. Brilliant. And who in the world designed Windows 8? Microsoft spent years coming up with this, yet surely can’t have tested it on any non geeks. I even needed help learning to turn it off! Then all these folk have websites that you can link to for instant chat, but then all they tell you is that you need to contact the horrible service you always used to. Thank goodness for the helpful people in Staples.

OK, that is enough on moving. It helped to write about it, so maybe that is another lesson: share your pain. Now I’ll get back to the boxes. I’ll not skimp on help, focus on time critical items, do something that I find pointless but my wife will appreciate, and take everyone out to dinner again, where we’ll search for a positive story for the whole experience. Then after I’ve become even more frustrated with Windows 8 and Home Depot, I’ll start the most important job: chucking things out in preparation for the next move.