Notes from the Move

We're not done yet, but everything is out of our old house and we are done with the big truck.

Some things that went wrong:

• After locking the truck up securely the first night, we discovered in the morning that the only key we had didn't open the cab doors and had to call the rental company's emergency roadside assistance to let us in.
• The truck wouldn't start on the second morning. We thought the battery was dead and called emergency roadside assistance again. Turned out the truck had to be in drive to start!
• Not having done the math ahead of time, we didn't realize that an 8'x26' truck holds more stuff than a 10'x20' storage unit and we ended up having to give away more stuff than we had planned to.
• Bringing the truck into the city on the fourth morning we spent a couple hours in traffic averaging about 10mph, followed by one hour in which we traveled less than a mile. I realized that I would take two hours of active labor over two hours stuck in a traffic jam any day. I think this is because I have a low tolerance for frustration (and a fairly high tolerance for pain).
• Later that day, when we were getting ready to return the truck, I discovered the battery in my car was dead (probably because I had left the headlights on, doh!), and we had to find somebody to give us a jump.

Some things that went right:

• We remembered all the tricks for getting the furniture through doors and around corners, and we remembered to take the drawers out of the desk and dressers before moving them, so moving the furniture went easier than we expected.
• Our boxes were already packed from previous trips back, so loading the truck went pretty quickly, especially with the $25 hand truck we purchased.
• Our 7-month-old handled all the time in the car (about 20 hours over four days) really well.
• My mother-in-law was able to babysit on the day we took our stuff into the city.
• The guys our super found to help us get stuff out of the truck and into the apartment worked hard and made quick work of the job, so that even with the other problems we had that day we were able to be home in time for baby's bedtime.