Today Peter and I have officially started packing after having collected a few boxes over the past couple of days. It’s hard to imagine that in a week’s time we may actually be moved… heck, it’s hard to imagine that we’re even going to find enough boxes, let alone get them all packed in time. It’s daunting, to say the least.
I still don’t even know how we’re going to move yet. Options are probably now down to renting a van and getting friends to help. I’m still waiting for estimates from a couple of moving companies but I’m sure they will be way too expensive. As for when, it could really be anytime after Thursday because the apartment is empty and that will give them time to finish painting, cleaning and doing minor repairs. I was hoping for Friday, which would give us the weekend to get settled in. We shall see.
But man – p*cking sucks! When I moved here from Salamanca all my worldly possessions, including two cats, fit neatly into a small hatchback. A year later when I moved from across the street I carried stuff over bit by bit. No furniture, just books, clothes, cats and kitchen stuff. And when I moved here from the apartment next door I didn’t have to pack one box, though I did fill up the laundry basket a few times. Compared to those times this is gonna be hell. On the plus side it’ll give me the chance to get rid of a lot of stuff, and there are lots of bookcases, cupboards and closets at the new place. Though I doubt I’ll ever look back on all this and laugh. Most likely I’ll shudder at the thought and just be thankful it’s over.
casa azahar 
Hey sweetie,
I have actually not so much to do this week, soooo… If you need any help, let me know! (Already offered this in the post about your maybe new house, but I’m not sure you saw it…)
Love,
Caroline
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I did see it – thank you! – but thought I wouldn’t hold you to it in case you changed your mind. Am actually wondering if doing a few short runs in a car (ie, your car?) might be a good idea for Thursday or Friday, to move fragile stuff and other odds and ends that won’t easily fit in a box. Then get the van to move boxes and furniture on Saturday.
Would you be up for that? I’ll buy lunch! 🙂
Will email…
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Cool, sounds great! Mail you back! 🙂
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Blech to packing and moving! You’re right, though – it can be a great opportunity to evaluate and purge belongings. Glad you found an acceptable apartment – good luck with the move!
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My rule is that if I haven’t used/worn it in the past two years then out it goes. Yesterday I threw out whole files of things with barely a glance as they’d been in the back of a cupboard for years. I reckoned if I didn’t even know what was inside then I wasn’t going to miss them.
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I did the “hatchback move” once, and still had to borrow a friend’s time and pickup truck for one afternoon. Decided then and there that I would pay moving men or stay put the next time. I was so thrilled to find it took two guys and a truck three hours to move three times as much as I’d budged in two days.
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I’m going to call around for prices today. One place seems to charge 60 euros an hour and I’d be surprised if it took them more than two hours just to schlep everything over. I’d end up paying the same to rent a van and then give my friend’s sons something to do it (if they are still up for it – though they did offer awhile back). Even still, I like the idea of me and Caroline bringing some things over by car on Friday, like dishes, the computers, etc. It’s so great she’s going to do that.
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I once had to move, in the height of summer, with a roaring cold, using a grocery buggy (the kind you bring your groceries home in — not a grocery cart — That would have been a LUXURY!) on the bus…
20 or so trips….
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packing sucks, no doubt about it….after our last move a couple years ago, we hope to stay put for some time.
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My friend Agustín had to “move” twice in about six months when he totally renovated his place – he and his family rented a small furnished apartment and so most of his stuff went into storage but of course clothing and other personal necessities went to the temporary digs. He told me that the packing and then unpacking was the worst time in his life.
So far the living room is stacked with filled boxes and it looks like nothing has been packed yet. Eek.
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You’re suggestion about the liquor stores was a huge, I mean huge, help to us. We also learned to pack less things into boxes and use smaller boxes. Something about not being twenty five anymore.
I am really looking forward to videos of the new home, and new stories from the new home. You will keep inspiring me.
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I need to get some sleep! Sorry about the “You’re!”
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Heh, as I’m no longer a full-time English teacher, you’re off the hook. 😉
I wish I could take my own advice but there aren’t many liquor stores around here and the supermarkets seem to mysteriously get rid of their boxes just before I get there. I have asked a couple of places to save their boxes and so today I’ll go and see if they’ve kept their promise.
You bet I’m going to make a video of the new casa az – I even know how to edit now!
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Just a reminder NOT to use fruit or produce boxes. These pretty well sure to be infested with cockroaches.
My brother worked in a grocery store and he says NEVER bring produce boxes into your home. EVER!
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Most of the boxes we’ve collected so far have been “dismantled” so not likely to have any critters hiding in the folds. I’ve been picking them up from the supermarket warehouse…
Though now that you mention it, I remember once whisking Lua to the vet in a cardboard box borrowed from the bar next door after she fell three storeys and broke her hip. Didn’t have a cat carrier in those days, so kept her in the box on my lap in the taxi and in the waiting room… then home again. And as soon as I put the box down when I got home a MASSIVE roach came trundling out from the underflaps of the box and I nearly died.
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DT first moved overseas to be with me, with approx 350kgs of stuff. He went into the thing very wholeheartedly and moved EVERYTHING he owned…
18 months later we moved together back to the UK and our joint ‘stuff’ plus furniture was around 1ton (!) of stuff. We had a to pack up everything, even stuff that in a normal move would just be stuck in somewhere just as it comes, stuff like sleeping bags and tents. It took us a week of boxing things up and then about 6 hours to move everything into the vans, move the vans and unload them into the container.
Then about 3 weeks later the truck delivered it all to our new temporary home and we unpacked everything and moved in. 9 months after that we bought our house and moved again, the whole 1ton thing plus any new furniture we’d added, again, just us doing it.
There were two lessons learnt from this: moving overseas is fine the once, when you do it blind but having done it I never want to do it again; and any other move to anywhere else will be done with Men Who Do The Work For You. I don’t currently care how much it might cost – we’re NOT doing it again.
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