Fullers Move East Part 1: The Packathon

I've been dying for a chance to sit down and document our move and I'm finally getting a chance to get it started! Let me tell you time has been hard to come by lately. While we have been having some fun over the past month we have also been working hard to get settled into our new home. There has been much to do with unpacking, organizing, trying to enjoy the last few days of summer, visiting family, getting ready for work, starting up Dan's business again and all manner of other things. Alas before I start rambling again here is part one of our move east.

As you all know moving really begins long before you actually, "move." As we have passed through the entire process now I am able to say without a doubt that the absolute worst part of moving is the preparation that is involved with it. Tack on the fact that we were moving across the country and you've entered a whole new ball game.

The days leading up to our move east were beyond stressful. Even though I started sorting, decluttering, packing and organizing months before the big day there was no way I could be prepared for the amount of work that we had cut out for ourselves.

Because we are cheap (or poor- take your pick) we chose to move our things by sending them with a trucking company. We looked into many moving options but this was by far the cheapest method of transportation (like $3000 cheaper than using u haul or those fancy pods they have.)

Because we sent our stuff with a trucking company we had to have all of our things packed in boxes and then loaded onto skids (pallets) which we had to deliver to the shipping yard ourselves. These skids were then put onto trucks and sent across the country.

Packing boxes itself is a big job when you're moving, but add playing the ultimate game of Jenga while you try to build skids with as much stuff possible sends you into a whole new dimension. Dan had to rent a big flat bed which we then put empty skids onto and spent 2 days building! Let me tell you we did not think it would take that long! Thank goodness for the help of the missionaries or we would have been in even more trouble! It's also important to note that we had to pack all of the large items we were moving onto the skids- this included all of our boxes and furniture items, back yard play equipment and all kinds of other goodies. Oh yes and the best part of all was that the two days that we had to load our skids happened to be the two hottest days in Calgary all summer. I kid you not we were sweating buckets out there while we moved and packed and stacked and wrapped! We ended up packing 9 skids over two days with two delivery trips to the trucking depot. Here are some pictures of our handy work!

Believe it or not these skids took hours to build!

A better view of the truck with some of the skids.
Kind of sad I didn't get a couple more shots of the whole truck!
Dan is a master packer!

After we finally succeeded in packing everything (well everything we didn't decide to leave behind because we were just sick of packing!) we still had the lovely job of finishing up the house. There were several things which we opted to send in our van which Dan was driving across the country, items such as valuables and breakables we didn't want to rick losing to the skids. By the time we got to this it was late Thursday night and I was planning to fly out with the kids Saturday morning (more on this to follow.) We spent all day Friday trying to sort though the last of the stuff in the house and let me tell you there was still a heck of a lot of stuff! Honestly I recommend a monthly purge of times you no longer use to avoid what we went through with our move! I ended up sending a huge load of stuff to the Goodwill and left a bunch of things behind that I just didn't care to deal moving.

The one good things about all of this is that I have become much better at letting things go. I am a bit of a lover of things, and often have a difficult time getting rid of objects that I really like. But through this whole moving process I came to realize more and more that things are just things and they came be replaced!

Moving week was truly a test of many things for me. I definitely had some bad moments in dealing with the stress of it all, but in all honesty I have never been so exhausted and pushed to my limit in so many ways for so long! It was a hard week and I was so relieved when everything was packed up and I knew it was on its way. Even though only a portion of the difficult journey was complete after the packing was done it was one very stressful part of the journey that I was relived to be free from.

Jordan