Moving Day

Chicago, IL

I couldn't sleep the night before we moved. I woke up at 4:30 with excitement and anticipation and couldn't get back to sleep. Clay left for his last session of physical therapy (on the arm where he had surgery to repair the torn tendon in June) at 6:30 and since the movers were coming at 8 it was time to be up anyway.

The movers arrived on time but couldn't start for another hour as the cars hadn't moved as requested by their parking permit. But they were quick and efficient once they got started and required nothing more from us than to move our laptops off the nightstands and give up our perches on the bed when they were ready for that too.

Next we headed to our storage facility a few blocks away where the rest of our household items were stored. My job was to watch the open unit while sitting in a chair and listening to the pop music piped in through the speakers while the movers went back and forth. Tough gig but someone had to do it. As we got down to the last items the movers informed us that the last crate to be filled could either fit our sofa or the bed and the rest of the boxes.  We went around and around with the different options. Perhaps they could fit the sofa and we could mail the book boxes as media with the post office, or they could fit the boxes and we could get a new sofa once we arrive. Then I had the idea to leave that second queen-sized bed as we were planning on buying a king-sized one upon arrival anyway. Turns out the sofa fit diagonally which meant they could accommodate all the boxes. Phew!

So we just had to figure out what to do with the bed. According to the facility we couldn't leave it in the unit as we technically wouldn't have moved out and they would keep charging us. They also didn't have a dumpster where we could leave it. At such short notice we wouldn't be able to donate it and many facilities don't take mattresses anyway. As we headed downstairs we pondered the options when we saw two groups of young men moving items into the facility. Clay asked the first group if they wanted the mattress. They didn't. They were trying to downsize. The second group didn't need it either. Then I told them that they could sell it on Craigslist but that we didn't have the time to as we were leaving that night. They agreed to take the mattress set and sell it and actually asked if we wanted to give them our contact info so they could share the proceeds with us. So thoughtful but totally unnecessary. They were doing us a favor and we just wanted to be done. We shook hands and left.

By this time it was 2:30 in the afternoon and we were hungry and still had another errand. Clay had promised me Swedish pancakes (the third time I ate them that week but who is counting) so that's what we had. After running the last errand we got back to our empty place in the evening and ate a picnic dinner in the middle of the bare living room. Then we curled up with sweaters under our heads for a few hours nap before hitting the road.

-jev