My Big Move
I can’t believe it’s actually happening
My big move is this week. After twenty-six years of living in a rental house I’m moving to a townhouse my husband and I purchased. We’ll be paying the mortgage for a frighteningly long time, considering our ages, but buying was a better option for us.
The last time I moved I had toddlers in tow. Now I have a grandchild about the same age. The years just keep on coming, one right after the other.
I was wonderfully organized the last time around. I was stronger then — ah, the gift of youth — and I was able to prepare by getting all the big stuff crammed into the dining room the night before. The next day, while my husband (now ex) loaded the truck with some helpers, I pushed the bulky items to the back door while managing the kids.
We had the place emptied and into the U-Haul in forty-five minutes.
I don’t expect our move to go as fast this time around, but hopefully it’ll still be fairly quick.
My sister told me about how she colour-coded her boxes for her last move. Each room had its own colour and she had someone directing people to the right rooms. What a fantastic idea!
Now every box in my house has a strip of coloured tape on it and the new place will have a matching strip of tape at the entrance to the room. This should make unloading everything easier.
We’ll also be getting our keys early, so I’ll have time to paint the walls and clean up after the last people before we get our stuff inside. If there’s anything I’ve learned from the buying process it’s that people don’t clean their houses before listing them.
Honestly, this is just odd to me. I’ve been a renter all my life and I’m used to making sure I have the place spic-and-span before leaving. Some things can be left, the landlord would always charge to have carpets cleaned so there’s no point in doing it myself, but I’d make sure the rest of the place is move-in ready by the time I did the move-out inspection.
Even my landlord here expects me to clean up. He specifically said we don’t have to shampoo the carpets or clean the walls but he does want it ‘surface cleaned’ which, apparently, includes cleaning the fridge and stove.
The house is slated for demolition. The people that bought it will be building infill housing on the lot. Cleaning it seems pointless.
But I don’t want to leave my tenancy on a bad note, so I did clean the two appliances. I’ll make sure the carpets are vacuumed, the floors swept, and the surfaces wiped down before the move-out inspection. The grass will be cut and we won’t leave any garbage behind as well. There should be no reason for him to withhold any of my damage deposit.
After all that, I can start on the next adventure: setting up and settling into our new place. I’ll have to take a new route to see my kids and grandchild, I’ll have a new area to explore, and a new floor plan to get used to, one tiny step at a time.
