Moving is task no one enjoys

Moving is something nobody enjoys, although I’m beginning to think that I do since I’ve done it more than 15 times in my lifetime.
No, I’m not a nomad or Cane from “Kung Fu,” wandering the Earth. I moved a lot with my family as a kid, and since graduating from college 10 years ago I’ve lived in apartments in four cities before settling down, getting married and buying my first home in Wautoma.
After more than a year of trying, my wife and I finally sold that home last week to move to Plover in order to be closer to our jobs. We loved our house, and selling it was one of the hardest things we’ve ever had to do, although we know in the long run it will be for the better, especially since fuel costs are rising quicker than the balloons that whisked the priest away two weeks ago.
My wife and I decided to move to an apartment for a year or two while we continue to search for the perfect house in our price range or a lot of land to eventually build a home.
Moving from a two-story, four-bedroom home on a double lot complete with a garage and a storage shed into a two-bedroom apartment is not an easy task. Even though we are fairly young, we accumulated a lot of stuff over the years, most of which we hardly ever used. To rid ourselves of some of this stuff, we held a rummage sale prior to moving.
We’ve held rummage sales on an almost annual basis, but this one was the mother of all rummage sales. You name it and we had it. To make sure we didn’t have any rummage sale leftovers, we put prices on everything to make sure it sold.
The few items left at the end of the two-day sale we put on the curb with a sign that said “free.” Although these leftovers seemed like junk, which is probably why they didn’t sell, the word “free” is a magnet that quickly drew people to forage through our pile, leaving just a few things for the garbage collector. One person’s junk is another person’s treasure, some old adage says, although I could revise it to say one family’s junk is many people’s treasures.
Selling items we no longer needed wasn’t enough to squeeze us into an apartment, though. We had to rent a 10’x15’ storage unit and determine which items we wanted to keep there. Some of these decisions were easy, but others were a little more difficult, especially when my wife and I differed on opinions.
For example, I thought we should bring our camping supplies to the apartment, as I hope to go camping this year, but my wife thought that would take up space we didn’t have. She correctly determined that we would get the camping equipment out of storage when we wanted to go.
Filling up the storage space was easy, and I thought that by doing so we would be left with the apartment essentials on moving day, requiring just one U-Haul load in our move. I was wrong. We filled the 17-foot U-Haul up and still had a lot left. This extra stuff required multiple trips back and forth in several vehicles to empty the house.
Loading the U-Haul was surprisingly easy, although unloading it was tough. Why? Because we wanted an upper apartment, which had a little more space.
After four years of living in a house, life in an apartment is an adjustment, especially since we now have a kid who is used to jumping around, yelling and doing things he had free roam to do in our own house. My wife is convinced the neighbors are going to start a petition and have us kicked out of the apartment, but I think their barking dogs puts us all on equal ground.
We’re settled in now, but we’re not getting too comfortable. We know at least one more move looms in our future. We’re already budgeting for Two Guys and a Truck, so we can watch from the sideline as other people do the grunt work. Maybe I’ll direct them, seeing as I have enough experience doing their job.