Moving Tips and Pre-Pre-Contruction

So our preconstruction meeting is scheduled for this Friday!! We will finally meet D., our PM, that we've heard so much about.

Also, we moved over 4th of July weekend...yeah, not fun. While everyone in America was relaxing, I was packing a POD like life-size tetris. After moving 3 times in the past year and a half (no joke), I have developed some moving tips. Many of these are if space saving is important as it was very important to us.

1. If you can avoid it, just don't move : )

2. If you are storing stuff for a short period of time (couple months) and plan to do a POD or A/C storage unit, pack excess and off-season clothes if you are downsizing.

3. Use trashbags for clothes, pillows, linens. This gives you something to stuff in those tight, odd shaped spaces between furniture AND creates padding for nice furniture at the same time.

4. Use a tape measure. I had a tape measure attached to my hip ALL weekend. This saves lifting a heavy box up head level only to find it doesn't fit in that space you were going to cram it in. More importantly, it helps you become a Master Tetris Loader. If you have an 18" space and a 14" box, find a bigger box (go for 18.5" and cram it in.) Obviously make sure you know which are your fragile boxes......"Fragile'. Huh, must be Italian."

5. Fill your dresser drawers and washer/dryer with stuff. If you fill the dresser drawers, this takes time which means you have to do it before moving the dressers to the POD/truck. So what, tell your movers to "man up" (or take the drawers out while carrying.) I filled ours with clothes, smaller picture frames. I filled our washer/dryer with wreathes, christmas tree stands and other odd shaped, non-boxed items.

Since I don't have a house to take pics of, here are pics of my Master Tetris Loader skills:

^ Hard to tell but the box on the left is less than an inch from the top of the POD. This was before I found something to stuff on top of the box on the right. (the white is the transparent top...very cool b/c it lets in light...and bakes you like ...something you would bake.)

^ The top of the beam in the background is the top of the POD. Not my best work but good.

^ I love inexpensive pictures/mirrors. They fill tight spaces well and no matter how close you get to the top, you can always wedge it in.

^ See the space to the bottom right of the pink luggage...that's prime trashbag stuffing space.


And below is my son standing on top of a TV watching another TV (this is what happens when all the adults are busy packing).......

Here is a pic of our new sleeping arrangements. Man, pregnant wife, and 2yr old son in one room...

We already felt bad for taking him out of his room and taking his routine/normalcy so we put his bed together while leaving ours sitting on the floor.


Lastly, here is a random pic of our old kitchen. To help sell, we spent about $200 on materials and installed our own backsplash and drawer pulls. The backsplash looks weird in the pics b/c the sunlight and my point and click camera don't jive.....

We closed on the sell of our house today. Horray. Goodbye house. (Goodnight mush. Goodnight old lady whispering hush...ha. Funny how I used to quote movies and now I quote kids books and kids shows.)