I was probably the least helpful mover ever. I moved everything light. Which wasn't much since so much was in boxes. Lamps, blankets, etc. were moved by me. I spent a lot of time, sitting, directing and getting food. But I was under doctor's instructions not to "strain myself." Which he defined as "don't pick up anything heavy and move it for long periods of time or space." So moving a heavy box off of something to the floor = ok. Picking up the same heavy box and moving it from the house, down a flight or stairs to the truck = bad.
We had 3 guys and one girl help us. Thank goodness for our friend Chris who works at Boeing with Tito...he had the best sense of space and basically took over direction of where things went in the truck and what could fit. Before he got there, Tito decided to move boxes out to the truck. I reminded him he needed to move furniture first then the boxes since you can put boxes on furniture but you can't really put a couch on top of boxes. :) So thankfully Chris showed up and reorganized everything. And we should have gone with my gut and gotten the larger truck. We got the 17' one and had to make two trips. One trip the truck was completely full, the second the truck was about 1/4 to 1/2 full. We started moving at 9am, and didn't finish until 8:30pm. Granted, we took breaks and lunch. But it was a LONG day. Tito left to bring the truck back at about 9pm, went to get his car with my brother, had to drive back to our new place and have my brother help him move our big tv up to the new place and then had to drive my brother back to Green Lake. They stopped for dinner first and then Tito came home at about 11:30pm. In the time he left at 9pm until about 10:30pm though I managed to get all of the dining room furniture in place and some of the boxes unpacked for the dining room.
I woke up naturally at 6am yesterday morning. We have no cable or internet yet, so I spent the day with the laptop on the breakfast bar, watching some of our movie collection. I had a mini-Sarah Jessica Parker fest (Sex and the City, Failure to Launch and The Family Stone), then watched Dirty Dancing Havana Nights (ah, Patrick Swayze cameos..), The Wedding Date and Fun With Dick and Jane, as well as Madagascar. Fun times. I managed to get 99% of the kitchen unpacked and organized, as well as the rest of the dining room, and organized our deck and storage closet. Then I tackled about 1/2 the closet. I worked from 6am taking little breaks here and there until about 7pm.
Downside of this place is that while it has more rooms and a better layout, it has less storage space. So it's really putting my organizational skills to the test. We lost a linen closet, our laundry room (and pantry area) a master bedroom closet and large hall closet. And our bathrooms have essentially no storage space. So a trip to Ikea is in our future. We've got to get some shelves for my craft area, something to hold towels in for the bathrooms, and something that can have closed doors and be our pantry area for overflow food in our dining area.
Last night Tito thankfully put our bed together (we'd been sleeping on the mattress on the floor) while I took a bath and rested my feet and back (SO happy to have a bathtub in our master bathroom again! We'd only had a shower in our last place and had to take baths in the guest bath.) and I fell asleep at about 9pm. Had to get up to pee twice in the middle of the night and my lower back hurt so much I almost had to crawl to the bathroom. I couldn't stand up straight. Felt much better this morning though. :)
New commute is ok. Took me about 45 minutes to drive in via I-5 (it was a toss up to take I-5 or 405 since we're halfway in between them) but I chose I-5 this morning. Annoying Seattle drivers that don't know how to merge properly were everywhere so it was a commute filled with "let's drive the speed limit" to "let's sit at a standstill on the highway for 4 minutes because people up ahead don't know how to merge." But I made it.
Next weekend, we're planning on spending part of Saturday at the old apartment, patching, painting and cleaning. Then be done except for a walk through on the 31st.
Here's some photos:
Dining area filled with boxes
Dining area mostly in place
Kitchen before
One of my favorite parts of the kitchen, the built in drawer organizers! ( My inner organizational OCDness loved this!)
Kitchen after
Kitchen after
Kitchen after
Monet adjusting...she was fine once we put the food out!
And here's how Epi adjusted...hiding behind our box spring in the hallway for about an hour (much better than last move!) and then she came out, had some food, used the cat box and was fine. :)
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