Moving.

If moving were a profession, I would be in the highest pay bracket! I moved about 9 times as a child/teenager, all of my possessions into dorms at the beginning of the school year and back home at the end, and am gearing up for fifth move of my marriage, (we have been married for three years and 9 months). I know how to move. We have moved ourselves all of these occassions. For our province switch moves Nick has driven the Uhaul and I have followed in the car. We pack up, we unload we do it all. On our second last move we only had one friend to help us unload the truck and I was pregnant which meant no lifting. It took Nick and Anthony 45 minutes to move all of our stuff from the truck to the house.

Because we move so often we live lightly. When some people move they are constantly on the look out for more boxes. I have a personal goal of using less boxes each move. Currently we can get everything we own into Rubbermaid containers we bought on sale and all our books go into Xerox paper boxes as it keeps them light enough to carry. I have a system. I can pack our two bedroom apartment in 6 hours.

Now we always downsize a bit with each move. For example Nick is now done college so he'll be purging his t-shirt collection and the search will be on for affordable office attire after we move. Belle really does not need 400 teddy bears. Some of our "furniture" has been beaten up and we're not taking it, and I collect articles on things I'm interested in from interior design to recipes to scrapbooking to baby care. I'll be going through those for sure.

This time around it's a bit different, or so we thought. At first we decided to have Nick drive the U-Haul and tow the car, and me and Belle would fly. Then we decided to just bite the bullet and have a moving company move our stuff and the car and we would all fly. Then we started getting estimates. I think we have now both recovered from our heart attacks. The estimates ranged from $3,000 to $6,500.

But we got one estimate from a company that seems reputable. It isn't an independant but it's not a name I've heard others using. The price, very reasonable $1,700 to move our stuff. Wow. And Nick, who is better at guessing weight and measurements than me, thinks the estimate is a bit high. He thinks we have maybe 2500 lbs of stuff and not 3000 lbs. So that's great. We then decided to have them move us and we would drive. Making a vacation out of it and going through the US stopping at the Mall of America and other places of interest we decide on.

So we decided to get in touch with the "reputable" moving companies to see, well I'm not sure what we were looking to see. But we got in touch with them. One lady came to the house to do the walk around estimate which she would have to me "that day". I still have not heard and that was a week ago. Some other companies are sending reps next week.

But I talked with a man and he crunched a rough estimate for me. To go with this reputable company, it would cost around $3,500 to $4,000 and we would have to pack up our house on July 17th in order to ensure delivery of our stuff for sometime between July 31 and August 5. Yikes. That is a long time for a toddler to be without her stuff, okay who am I kidding. That's a long time for a preggo who will be in the "nesting" stage to not have a home! And for my husband to not have a tv!!

There are so many things to consider. It's one of those times when you wish you could fast forward to the other end and see which scenrio is best. Does a higher dollar value really mean better service? And with both the cheap and the expensive the insurance only covers theft or damage caused by collision. It doesn't cover the cost of anything broken in any box we pack. So there's not more peace of mind of everything arriving in one piece. It's so crazy to know that I am going to have to make a phone call and book a truck and plan a move and if it goes haywire that's on my shoulders. Growing up is heavy.