Lessons Learned: Moving is NOT for Sissies!
Post By BlogPaws Co-founder, Yvonne DiVita
I moved. I uprooted my business (I work from home) and my home and moved from one thriving, bustling suburb in Colorado, to a smaller, quieter location, in Colorado. We don’t live far from where we used to live. However, the location of our home now is just a hop, skip and a jump from the original home we lived in, when we first moved to Colorado.
Some people think moving is a hobby of mine. Yes, we’ve only been in Colorado for a bit over five years, and we’ve moved three times, but let’s be clear… a person should live where they can thrive and grow. Each move was necessary for both health and sanity, and we are so delighted with our newly built home, and the neighborhood it’s in, that we are confident this is our last move…ever.
Somehow, this particular move was more time consuming and difficult than any of the other moves. It was even harder than the move from Upstate NY to Colorado, close to six years ago. I am not exactly sure why but here are my thoughts.
The lessons learned from Moving again…
1. Moving is not for sissies. There are boxes to pack, boxes to move and boxes to get from wherever you can get them. You will need more boxes than you think. If, like Tom and I, you have a library (that would be a good many bookcases full of books…yes, hundreds) you will reuse many of your boxes so make sure they’re sturdy. Thank goodness for Only Natural Pet, in Boulder. They supplied probably 200 boxes for us. Well, it seemed like 200. Maybe it was only 100. Still, we tapped into them as a box resource several times.
2. Moving is hard, hard work. I am a wimp, by nature. I enjoy the work I do because it’s mostly typing on a computer. I don’t do a lot of manual labor – unless you count cleaning the house. And walking the dogs. This move required a lot of manual labor. Yes, we hired movers for the biggest items, but in order to save money, we did all of the “will this fit in the car” items ourselves, which includes all the boxes. I hope I never have to lift another box in my entire life!
3. Moving helps you revise your life. We did manage to get rid of a whole lot. But not enough. Yes, like many people, we have unopened boxes from… the original move to Colorado. Tom and I have made a commitment to open those boxes and decide their fate, in the next six months. It’s time to declutter to the max. That also means… looking at some of the furniture and dishes I’ve accumulated over the years. I don’t need all of the fancy stoneware I have. I never use it. I don’t need a dozen or more fancy wine glasses. When we entertain, we seldom bring them out. Maybe… I don’t need the nice dining room hutch my mother gave me. Since I don’t have a dining room anymore.
4. Moving stresses out the pets even more than it stresses out the humans. While our pups, Olive and Emily, adjust well to all these moves, they still get confused and seem lost. Olive especially finds the move strange. We now have a walk out basement, and in the early days of allowing them on the new lawn (for two weeks they couldn’t go on the lawn at all… we had to walk them several times a day, which they didn’t mind at all and which made them familiar with the area), we let her out that door and that’s the door she came in. When we wanted her to go out the side stairs on the first floor, via our sliding glass doors, she did so…but then she ran to the back door in the basement to come in. Standing on the deck above calling her just confused her. Poor little thing thought she was lost!
Emily, when we moved in officially, wanted to go “home.” To the home she knew, back in Thornton. She made that clear by her big brown eyes and her repeated trips to the front door. She refused, in the first few days, to enter our bedroom and snuggle on the bed with us, which is a nightly ritual. Olive had no such problem, nor did Molly, our cat. I still do not know why Emily refused to come in the room… she got over it on day three, I think. When she couldn’t stand that the other dogs and Molly were going in there… at that point we were pet sitting our grand-dogs, Twiggy and Onyx, who were rather nonplussed about it all. Guess it didn’t affect them because it was a place they were visiting, after all. And all the regular people, pets and furniture were the same.
5. Moving should be done for the right reasons… In other words, though folks consider my desire to move a hobby, given I do it more than the average person (on average, most people stay put for five to eight years, I understand), I am not fond of moving. I have merely been searching for that perfect location, that perfect house, that perfect place to call home. I have enjoyed the locations we lived in, here in Colorado. I have a fondness for our original location, Frederick, but I don’t miss the house we had. It was a starter home for us. In Thornton, I thought I was done. I thought we had found the last, best place for us. But, as the days went on, as the weeks turned into months, the house became… just a house. Just a place we lived. I did LOVE Thornton, the suburb, but even that was more… city than I wanted. I am not a country girl, don’t get me wrong. I do not want to live in the mountains… the mountains are exactly where they belong… an hour’s ride in the car. But, I did miss the country flair of Frederick, I think. And, I was weary of all the stairs in the Thornton home.
That is why we finally searched and found this home, with its one floor living, its walkout basement and its mountain view, in a little place called Firestone. Firestone is close enough to get whatever we need within 15 minutes; it’s an up-and-coming place, with lots of fields and country flair; the neighborhood we live in is part family, part retirees and all friendly, welcoming people. The field at the end of our street is likely going to be developed into a rec center, which will be wonderful for all. The supermarket we shop at is only a mile away. The dogs love the walking paths and I will say, we’ve seen a LOT of dogs. People here are quite pet friendly.
We have found our home. That’s the ultimate reason we moved – because we just weren’t home yet. Now we are.
And, I will repeat, moving is not for sissies! Oh boy… if only I shared all of the mishaps, dropped boxes, long days and exhausted nights…this post would be a book of about 300 pages!
As we settle in, I know our future is filled with great expectations.
