Moving

Over the past year we have moved a lot. We sold our place in London and moved to the other side of London. Then we sent all of our belongings to the other side of the world and travelled through China for 3 months. Then we landed in Perth, put our stuff in a car and drove to the other side of Australia. That was all stressful. But I don’t remember any of it being as annoying as last weekend when we moved 3 blocks across Sydney.

When we moved across London we hired 2 Polish men with a truck, and some very questionable personal hygiene habits, to move our belongings. When we moved across the world we just put our stuff in boxes and someone came to pick it up. When we moved last weekend we did it all ourselves. I have never wanted 2 Polish men with questionable hygiene habits more than I did last weekend.

I say that we did it ourselves; my cousin helped. He was a lifesaver because there was no way we could have done it without him. Helping you move is the type of thing that you can only ask family to help with. A good friend will help you bury a body but when you need to move house they’re nowhere to be seen.

We really needed my cousin’s help too. Before you read the next sentence I want to make it clear how much I love my wife, she is amazing and I’m a better person because of her. But she is marginally stronger than an 11-year-old schoolgirl, which isn’t overly helpful when it comes to moving a fridge. So I needed my cousin’s help with the big things.

When you’re looking around the place you’re moving out of it all seems so simple. A couple of car trips and it’ll be done. You convince yourself that since you got it all in there it’ll be easy to get it all out. What you forget is that you got it all in there over the course of several months or years and you bought a new item of furniture to fill a need on average about once a month. But when you’re moving out you have to move it all in a weekend and that’s a whole new level of stupid.

We got it done and it’s all in. We hired a van for the big things and my cousin worked his butt off to help us. He’s not drinking alcohol for the month of July so I couldn’t even take him for a beer to say thank you. Instead I bought him a box of chocolates which is the type of gift you give to someone when you realise you only ever buy people booze these days and you’ve forgotten what the other acceptable forms of gifts are.

For those of you who are going to be moving house in the near future I have some words of advice for you – pay someone else to do it for you!! I know you think you can do it yourself and question if it’s worth the extra money to pay people to do it for you… it is, trust me.

If you ignore the above advice and still want to do it yourself then, in no particular order, here is a list of helpful tips for moving house:

• Bend from the knees – if you hurt yourself on the first trip you’ll have to hire someone else anyway.
• Buy furniture with wheels – it’s probably a bit late for this now that you’ve already decided to move but our fridge is missing a wheel and believe me when I say that I really missed that wheel.
• Try to avoid an argument with your partner early in the day – you will eventually have an argument but if you have it early then the rest of the day is awkward.
• Be realistic in your assessment of how much you can carry – it may take an extra trip and it may hurt your ego but if you drop the television because you were trying to balance it on the sofa you’ll regret it more than a little bruising of the ego.
• If your partner asks you to pose while you’re holding the washing machine so they can take a photo of you then you are allowed to start the inevitable argument early – recording moments with a camera is never a welcome distraction when you’re trying to lift something twice as heavy as you can possibly manage.
• Move embarrassing items before your relative comes around to help you – sure you may like to wear the superman outfit during sex but even the most gullible relation will eventually become suspicious when they find it in the draw with the wrist restraints.

Next time you’re thinking of moving you should make a list of all of the reasons for moving. Take your time composing this list and make it as exhaustive as possible. Then think very carefully about how heavy all of your stuff is and I bet you’ll conclude that staying put is probably the best option after all.

I’ll tell you more about our new place in the coming weeks…