More reasons to hate moving

Helping my daughter move to a new house in a new city over the weekend reminded me of why I said, six years ago, when we moved into our current home, that I would never move again. And my wife and I were only involved in the easy part, after the furniture was delivered.

It's amazing that we are such a "mobile society" when everyone says they hate moving. I've yet to meet anyone who said they liked it or enjoyed it, and it's easy to see why. The part that's not drudgery is torture. Even with the help of professional (and I use the term loosely — "paid" or "hired" might be better adjectives) movers, my daughter and son-in-law were left with a house that was more chaos than home. It was par for the course on moving day. It was hard, if not impossible, to find a place to sit down. The kitchen might as well not exist because almost everything associated with kitchen-ness was in a box stacked somewhere in the kitchen or dining room.

Over the two days of the weekend, we emptied and broke down scores of expensive moving boxes and stacked several feet of packing paper taken from those boxes. (My daughter had the brainstorm of offering the old moving boxes on CraigsList and got a couple of takers for the first couple of batches of empties.) We rearranged furniture, found lamps and light bulbs, decided where to stash cookware, food and other small items, and ate out (or takeout) every meal. When we left late Sunday, you could walk in at least three rooms. The computer and phones were hooked up, and it was possible to cook (as well as walk) in the kitchen.

Moving is a good motive to live simply. The less you own, the less you move, and the less you have to move, the less of an ordeal moving is. And we all move. I've looked at resumes of people who have moved every two years and wonder, "How do they stand it?" I turned down a military career largely because I didn't want to move every couple of years and because I wanted my children to grow up in one place, just as my wife and I had. We nearly achieved that goal. After our oldest was 8 years old, we never moved again until the kids were grown and gone. And my next move will be involuntary or at least non-cognizant.