Moving as Seen Through the Eyes of a 4-Year-Old

Wendy from Charlotte, North Carolina, has moved around a lot, but she knows that a move with little children presents its own set of issues. Putting your possessions on a big truck and moving them to a different house: As adults, we know what a huge undertaking that is. To kids, it's almost too much to comprehend.

Here's a cute story from Wendy's family's move in Ohio:

When we relocated from Hubbard to Westerville, Ohio, we took the three kids with us to the closing, and the owners gracefully allowed us to walk through, so the kids could see where we were going to live.

Our youngest was 4, just two months from turning 5.  The house was in upheaval, just as our present home was, with packed boxes stacked everywhere.  Matt, then 7, asked where we were going to put "our" stuff. I explained to Matt and Robin, 4, that this family was moving to another home and taking all their stuff with them, so the house would be completely empty and ready for us to move in with our stuff. That all our boxes would go in a big truck and the truck would deliver it all safely to us.  My explanation was well thought out and executed, and I thought they really understood.

On moving-in day, we arrived later than the movers and they had already begun unloading the garage stuff into the driveway.  Robin said to her brother, "Look, Matt! They have a bike just like yours!"  She still hadn't understood!

Moral of the story, no matter how well we try to prepare them, young children just can't comprehend moving into a new home.

I can relate to this story, as I'm sure most of you can. When I was preparing to move from Cleveland to Virginia with our 4-year-old, he was visibly upset about the move until I reassured him that we were taking everything.  "Everything?" he asked. "Everything!" I emphasized. 

"Are we taking this wall?" he asked. 

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If you like Diane's humorous take on moving, you'll love her book Home Sweet Homes: How Bundt Cakes, Bubble Wrap, and My Accent Helped Me Survive Nine Moves.

What Stuffed Animals? I Don't Remember Any Stuffed Animals

Here's a story that every parent can relate to, from Lynn of South Florida:

This is more of a confession than a funny story, but since my daughters are both adults now, I suppose it's time.

Lindsay and Brooks....the movers did not lose boxes of your stuffed animals when we moved from Miami to West Palm Beach.  I GAVE THEM AWAY.  What's worse, I donated them and took a tax deduction on them.  I sorted the ones I didn't think you'd miss (wrong again), and gave away dozens of them.  Maybe close to 100.  I only counted when I actually donated them, and we secreted away the tax forms so you wouldn't stumble upon them and discover us.

I knew they would need to be in storage for at least six months when we built the house, and who knew that a 6-year-old (Brooks, I'm talking about you) would have kept a ledger of her stuffed animals.  Mea culpa.

Think of it this way...since we got a tax deduction on the donation and then paid the bulk of your college tuition, we were actually paying forward with your stuffed animals.  And Brooks, since you are 26 and living in a foreign country now, and since your closet is still packed solid with stuffed animals, stacks of flute sheet music and child size 6 costumes, I'd say you still came out on the positive side of that ledger.

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If you like Diane's humorous take on moving, you'll love her book Home Sweet Homes: How Bundt Cakes, Bubble Wrap, and My Accent Helped Me Survive Nine Moves.

A Cat-Astrophic Move

Here at It's Your Move!, we hear from a lot of movers. There's a lot of complaints, gnashing of teeth, and pointing the finger of blame. But it occurs to me that there's another side to the story. Is it possible that maybe the moving companies might have their own stories to tell?

So we went to HireAHelper.com, a marketplace for movers. "The moving companies listed on our site do the hard work of lifting heavy furniture in hundreds of cities across the country," said Hire-a-Helper's Daniel Horning, "which means they see the full spectrum of panicked customers with interesting stories."

This story comes from Alhood Vanlines LLC, a Denver moving company, and involves a disappearing furry friend. Enjoy!

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About three weeks ago, here in beautiful Denver, CO, we did a full service move for a young lady. The relocation went very well, and the customer was happy with our services in the end, but there was an issue during the relocation. Pets like to hide or sneak out of homes when we relocate them, so we always recommend putting them in their own room. I received a call from one of my office workers who informed me of an upset customer. He was on the other line with this customer and all I could make out was him telling her "Ma'am we do not have your cat." 

Apparently this customer was convinced that my movers had stolen her cat when they performed her relocation. My movers informed the woman that typically cats will hide under beds, or commonly inside of couches, but the customer did not believe that was the case. She proceeded to call the office back again and informed us that she would be right over and that we were not to allow our movers to exit the truck until she got there.

This person somehow sped to our office and was able to beat our movers back. She asked them to step out of the truck while she searched the cab. She then had them open the back of the truck and searched it thoroughly. Our movers carry tool bags, so she asked them what was in the bag. My movers said, "our tools."

She replied, "Are you sure my cat is not in there?"

She was dead serious. Then she looked down the row of office buildings by our shop and asked, "What is that place?"

My mover answered, "It is a doggie daycare."

To which she replied, "Well, do they buy and sell cats there?"

It was as if she was implying that we had some sort of elaborate, organized cat smuggling ring going on in our spare time and moving furniture was our cover. A day went past and we received another call stating that at this point she was almost 100 percent sure that we had stolen her cat. The same office gentleman stated again "Ma'am, we do not have your cat." She then told him that he must just be covering for our movers because they are related. The gentlemen are, of course, not related and my office staff was a little taken aback by that statement, as they are both of African descent.

Twenty minutes later the lady called back to apologize to us and inform us that she had found her cat, he was in her couch hiding for two days, right where we suggested she look. People definitely take their pets seriously and value them as family, so we tread lightly until they are found.

Just another day for us, but still a funny situation to be in.

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If you like Diane's humorous take on moving, you'll love her book Home Sweet Homes: How Bundt Cakes, Bubble Wrap, and My Accent Helped Me Survive Nine Moves.

Don't Forget the Dog!

When I met Gene  last year, we shared many commonalities: We both loved to follow politics, we both lived in Florida and had both previously lived in South Jersey. She and I both had more than our share of funny moving stories. My favorite of Gene's stories were about her pup Patches.

Moving is comedic enough, but add a dog to the mix and you've got something between a Hallmark Original series and an after-school special. When I hear about Gene's moving adventures, I can picture Patches sitting there taking it all in.

After Gene read Home Sweet Homes, she sat down and wrote about her family's moving adventures, in which Patches took a starring role. You'll love her stories.

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I have been enjoying your book and had quite a few laughs.  I used to say that I was going to write a book about one of our moves.

Foremost was the one from Maryland to North Carolina.  We got the final belongings out of the Maryland house, left the last key on the kitchen counter, locked the door and left - only to realize down the street a bit that we had forgotten Patches, our dog.  Our 5-year old said, "Mom, don't worry I can climb up the porch post, go into the house from the bedroom window, get Patches and come out."  We had no idea that he had done this before!

So, we made a last stop at a neighbor's home on the other side of our development, said our goodbyes, drove off and left Patches again!  Of course we returned and retrieved the dog and have quite a few more Patches stories to tell.

After living in an apartment for three months in Charlotte, North Carolina, while our new house was being finished in the Spring, we at long last moved into the home.  The Friday we were to finally move there was a small snowfall.  Of course everyone goes crazy down there when it snows.  Our moving van with all our household goods from the storage warehouse slid off the road and the driver decided it was far too dangerous to continue to the homesite, so they went back to the warehouse.

We meanwhile had moved our clothes, etc. out of the temporary apartment and had notified the utility companies to turn off the electricity, etc.  At this point we had no alternative but to return to the apartment for the weekend.  We managed to survive that weekend by running an extension cord from the neighbor's apartment next door so that we could have lights in our apartment.

And I forgot to tell you that the powder blue carpet which we had specially ordered from the mill in Eden, NC, had arrived defective.  The installers had rolled the carpet out in the street after they had installed the underlayment when they discovered the defects.  So we had to have plywood laid over the foam rubber underlayment before the furniture could be brought in. We lived like this for several months until our new carpet was ready from the mill and installed.  Only then did we realize that everytime Patches went out of the house we had to wipe all four paws upon his return because our sod had not been laid in the yard and the soil was red clay.  We also discovered that the builder had failed to install shims between the columns which supported the house and the floor joists, so the house shook when Patches walked across the kitchen floor.

Like you, we have had many moves and were able to stay in the North Carolina house only a year.  We left with me crying all the way to Moorestown, New Jersey. and have moved three times since for a total lifetime ownership of seven single-family homes and some condos added.

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Poor Patches! Sometimes I wonder what these dogs think of us, moving all over the place.  Now it’s Your Move! Tell us your funny moving stories at info@homesweethomesbook.com.  And don't forget to send in photos, too! 

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If you like Diane's humorous take on moving, you'll love her book Home Sweet Homes: How Bundt Cakes, Bubble Wrap, and My Accent Helped Me Survive Nine Moves.

How to Intimidate Your Movers

My friend Barb, who I've known since we were both nearly in diapers, is a savvy, single, sophisticated woman. But intimidating she is not. At the end of the day she's from Ohio, and as a Buckeye State native myself, I can tell you we are born with the honesty gene and the down-to-earth gene, but not an intimidation gene.

So when Barb was moving, her moving crew was - to put it gently - from the other side of the tracks. There were four of them and even fewer teeth among them. Barb was alone and just a little bit intimidated by her moving crew. Wanting to appear as menacing as she could, Barb did what any enterprising woman would do: She talked in a New York accent.

"So they would be afraid of me," she recalled. "How silly."

Barb also tipped the movers way more than she should have "so they would think I was a real New Yorker."

"They probably laughed all the way to the liquor store," she said.

 What's your funny moving story? Send us a note at info@homesweethomesbook.com.

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If you like Diane's humorous take on moving, you'll love her book Home Sweet Homes: How Bundt Cakes, Bubble Wrap, and My Accent Helped Me Survive Nine Moves.

My Quest to Declutter by Patricia Petro

Have you ever looked around a room in your house and wondered, How in heaven’s name did I ever accumulate so much stuff?

Everywhere you look, there’s something to see; and much of it is just sitting on shelves and tables or in cabinets, unused and untouched, except for the times when you have to move it to dust.

Maybe the thought occurs to you when it comes time to pack for a move. Suddenly, your books fill ten boxes. The good china has to be bubble-wrapped and packed with extra care. Crystal stemware, rarely used, is a bothersome worry. Kitchen gadgets galore and drawers full of miscellaneous little things get carelessly dumped into boxes for sorting through later. Pots and pans, wall hangings, lamps, and linens . . . the list goes on and on and the packing feels as though it will never end. And then, of course, there’s all that furniture.

“It takes living without it to realize how clutter affects your life and takes away from your freedom and creativity. I am reminded of that every time I walk into my kitchen and, instead of seeing a cluttered counter,
I see sunlight streaming in from the kitchen window.” —Courtney Carver, Be More With Less

It happened to me

During my last move I was so overwhelmed by all the stuff I owned, it took months for me just to channel the energy I needed to start packing. I kept telling myself, Simplify simplify simplify . . . use this move to purge the stuff you don’t really want or need.

To make a long story short, I didn’t purge much of anything and decided, instead, to purge as I unpacked.

Tom and I had bought a house and were moving in. With our children grown and on their own, it was just the two of us. We didn’t need a lot of space—a smaller house was a perfect fit. We were, however, combining two households, each with over twenty-five years worth of furniture, furnishings, files, household items, clothes, electronics, garden supplies, tools, toys, a cat and a dog. You name it, we had it . . . and, in many cases, we had duplicates of the same things. It was a lot of stuff to unpack. Finding room for it all was impossible.

There’s nothing wrong with having a lot of stuff, if that’s how you want to live. It wasn’t, however, part of my master plan.

This move was going to be a fresh start for us, a new beginning. I wanted our little house on the lake to be an inviting, restful retreat. Clean . . . serene . . . relaxing. As lovely as any of the model homes we had visited during our quest to find the perfect house. With just enough furniture to make it comfortable. And no clutter anywhere.

Decluttering is easy as 1-2-3 . . . but you have to be ruthless

1. Start small with a drawer or closet.

2. Decide to either keep an item or sell it. If you can’t sell the item or give it away, toss it.

3. If something is tugging on your heartstrings, put it in a box. Write the date on the box and store it for a year. If you haven’t opened the box within a year, get. rid. of. it.

Let the purging begin.

Patricia Petro writes the book on empty nesting every day with her website Our Empty Nest. Her motto? "Living simply. Simply living well." She and her husband, Tom, enjoy a drama-free, clutter-free life of two happy-go-lucky empty nesters. Her website offers recipes for two, decorating your home, simple living and "simply living well."

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If you like Diane's humorous take on moving, you'll love her book Home Sweet Homes: How Bundt Cakes, Bubble Wrap, and My Accent Helped Me Survive Nine Moves.

A Picture Frame Says a Thousand Words

Guest blog by Dawnyel Bowersox, Do It All Moms Blog

We love to ask people about their best - or worst - memories from moving. Some of those memories you have to block. We understand. I'm pretty sure I've blocked a bunch of moving memories, because I can't remember driving our 80-pound Akita from Kentucky to Florida with a car full of kids, suitcases, and random boxes of liquids and flammables. I mean, honestly, I can't remember a single thing about the trip, so I can only assume that there were nasty restrooms, bad junk food and some road rage involved. 

Dawnyel Bowersox, who has a cool moms' website full of fun, contests and coupons, has a story that we're glad is still fresh in her memory. It involves her mother-in-law, so you'll definitely want to read this.

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Newly married and moving into our first house, my husband was given a precious gift from his mother.  My Mother in-law. It was a collage type frame filled with time line photos of him ranging from birth up until he got married.  Such a nice and thoughtful idea.

When my mother in-law presented my husband with the frame she looked directly at me and said "Do NOT let anything happen to this photo frame,  this is the one thing I have been able to keep for him throughout the years."

I kind of took offense to that statement.  She was speaking to me as if I was going to break it. I assumed it was a family heirloom that it needed to be kept safe.

Finally settled into our new home, I began to  unpack and hang all of our photos on the wall. 

I made it down to the famous photo frame that my mother in-law had given to us.  I will admit, it was adorable.  I took it out to hang it and bang.  Yup, I dropped it.  The horror that was going through my mind.  My mother in-law was going to have a fit.  I broke the precious frame she had given her baby boy.  She will never forgive me, what am I going to do?  She will be here in the morning to help finish the unpacking.

Panic mode set in.  My first task as a daughter in-law and I completely failed.  I began tossing things out of boxes in a desperate search for super glue.  I was going to glue that baby back together and she would never know!  I had things strung from one end of the house to the other, literally.  I was sparing no item.  Why didn't I organize the boxes better, why can't I find the freaking super glue, why did she look directly at me and tell ME not to break the frame?

After a good 30 minutes of looking I did find the glue, I am pretty sure the heavens opened and I heard singing when I spotted the glue in the office supply box.  Why didn't I look there to begin with?   Frantically grabbing the glue and the frame I prepped for a painstaking photo frame procedure.  I was going to revive this frame if it was the last thing I did.

I laid the patient down on the dining room table, as I began to open it up it wasn't wanting to come apart.  So I yanked on it to get to the inside.  A picture frame can  say 1,000 words. What I saw was shocking!  There was hot glue everywhere inside the frame.  It was apparent that someone ELSE had previously broken the frame and did a poor job of fixing it.

If I confronted my mother in law, she would know I broke the frame.  If I didn't mention it to her I would go on wondering what the heck for the rest of my life.  I decided to be honest and tell the truth, not because it was the right thing to do, but because I wanted to know what the deal with the hot glue was. Curiosity got the best of me.

When my mother in-law got here the next day I came clean, but not without questioning the hot glue.  Her response.."Oh yeah I have dropped and broken that thing a few times, the last time I dropped it all I had was hot glue."

What?...WHAT???  I told her I thought it was a family heirloom and how sorry I was.  Her response was NOT shocking at all, and I do not know why I did not realize this in the beginning.  The photos were the precious items she did not want ruined, not the frame.  Well in a nut shell.."DUH."  That was the only thought in my head at that point.. DUH, DUH,  DUH.

Dawnyel Bowersox, in addition to having a cool name, runs Do It All Moms Blog.  Find money-saving tips, deals and coupon match-ups at www.doitallmomsblog.com. "Read my ridiculous ramblings and product reviews. Watch for giveaways, twitter parties, recipe and DIY ideas.  We make doing it all fun!"

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If you like Diane's humorous take on moving, you'll love her book Home Sweet Homes: How Bundt Cakes, Bubble Wrap, and My Accent Helped Me Survive Nine Moves.