What a weekend. I’m shattered. It’s been a blur! I’ve finally moved in to my new little home. Moved in but not entirely sorted. Oh the boxes and the disorganised chaos…
So Thursday I had the day off of work and really started packing in earnest. I’d done a lot of packing and sorting beforehand but now it was literally ensuring everything was packed. I won’t lie, I hugely underestimated this process. I don’t have a huge amount of stuff as it’s just me (and Alfie) and I wasn’t taking any real furniture with me, but that still leaves a lot of stuff that I’d left because I was still using. This included clothes, toiletries, shoes, handbags, kitchen stuff, food… and then cleaning the bathrooms, dusting, hoovering and cleaning cupboards.
Where’s Alfie?
I felt very overwhelmed and under a lot of pressure to get it done as the next day I had to be out of the house by 12. I rung my mum (who’s currently off of work for 8 weeks after having a back operation) and had a mini-meltdown. She felt guilty for not being able to help – which was ridiculous as she’s in a lot of discomfort at the moment and can’t drive or really do much and that’s hardly her fault so the last thing I wanted was for her to feel bad. But I just need to vent and stress before getting back to it.
I caved in the end and text my friend, Louise, asking her if she could spare some time the next day to help me. She’d offered her services a few weeks ago and I’d told her I’d be fine. Just a few boxes, easy peasy. Ha! How I’d completely underestimated things! Lou was awesome and said she could come in the morning and help. What a legend! She’s also far more practical and sensible in these sorts of areas. I’m from a different, less organised school of thought…
Friday morning I had to pick up a van at 8.30am and then get back home to start moving stuff out of the house. The hardest thing was the mattress, which Lou and I struggled to get into the van. And then found it took up a huge amount of space in the van. At this point the estate agent’s from where I was buying from had rung and said I could not pick up the keys for the flat. I thought it’d be a good idea to go to the estate agent’s in the van, pick up the keys and then take the mattress to the flat and sort that first.
Good plan in theory… we arrived at the estate agents around 11. I ran in and said I was there to pick up the keys only to have the woman stare at me like I was crazy. She said that that was a printing shop and that the estate agents had moved. So I had to ring them and find out where the hell they were: central Southampton (about 20 mins away)!! I would have had a mental breakdown had Louise not calmed me down. In the end we decided to pack as much as we could in the van (playing Tetris with the mattress and boxes and then I would carry on packing and Lou would go and pick the keys up for me.
We finished packing at 12.15. What an absolute grind!
I got to the flat and met Lou there with the keys and we unloaded a few things before she had to go. It was around 1pm and I needed to get the van back by 4.30pm (so leave at 4pm). My dad was supposed to be coming to help but he was stuck in a meeting at work. I tried to get on and get stuff unpacked but it was taking forever getting items out of the van and then up the two flights of stairs. It was slow and hard progress. I decided to call in another friend to see if he could spare even just 20 minutes.
I was so grateful when he, Mike, said he could spare an hour! When he got there we got a great system of him unloaded the van and putting stuff in the stairwell and me going up and down the stairs putting the stuff in the flat. It was like intervals, I swear to god. I was sweating, my heart was racing… it was exhausting! And not to mention the fact that I hadn’t eaten anything other than breakfast and two apples.
In under an hour though we got everything into the flat and the van was empty. Mike had to dash off to pick his daughter up but I was so grateful for his hard work and effort. I couldn’t have done it without him (or Louise!).
My dad arrived at 3pm and his task was to help me move an old sofa that had been left in the flat to the van so we could take it to the tip. I wasn’t going to kick up a fuss about it as I had a van and we could get rid of it quickly (I would have been in my rights to have done so though).
After dropping that off at the tip, I got a phonecall from my estate agents for the property I was selling saying that the buyer wasn’t happy I’d left the garden table and chairs. I had mistakenly thought I was leaving them (I had agreed to leave a lot of other furniture). So we then had to take the van and take that furniture to the tip.
This was all very rushed as it was just after 4pm and I needed to get the van back. We arrived at the tip literally at one minute past 4 to find they were closed. WHAT. So we had to swing by my parent’s house to drop the furniture off there as there was nowhere else for it to go and I needed to get the van back ASAP.
My parent’s gardener was there at the time and offered to take it off our hands as she quite fancied the furniture. What a happy ending!! And I got the van back in time. *HUGE SIGH OF RELIEF*
By the time I stopped it was dinner time and I was now out of adrenaline and STARVING. Luckily I’d had the forethought to have made a Hello Fresh meal up in the week that I just had to microwave.
I ate it on a (Hello Fresh) box, surveying the madness.
I’ll leave it there as this ramble has gone on a fair bit. So I can fully confirm that moving house is bloody stressful. But if you’re looking for a good way to start intermittent fasting, house moving really helps 😉 Though not when you then have a massive slice of white chocolate blondie from your freezer stash at the end…
Incidentally this is one of the cakes I got from Wales all those weeks ago. It was AMAZING. And all the better with my cake fork.
Have you ever moved house?
How do you cope under pressure?
Are you an organised or disorganised person?
I like to think that I am a fairly organised person, but when it came to moving house my last few boxes involved no kind of organisation whatsoever! I literally opened the lid of half-full boxes and threw things inside!
My nightmare when moving was that the date of the move changed, and I had already taken my one allowed moving day off from work so Dan ended up moving all of our belongings along with a friend’s Husband and my brother, all whilst I was at work! For someone who likes to be fairly in control of a situation I had a hard time letting them get on with it all whilst I was stuck teaching spreadsheets to eleven year olds!
We had a phone call from the person that had moved into our house when she arrived to say that she wanted us to remove all of the leftover firewood in the woodshed of our old house (despite the house having a wood burner!)
Moving day is just so stressful! Glad you are finally in now. You can start to make it a home! 🙂
Mary recently posted…The cow slurry cross-country
I was just a giant ball of stress to be honest. And this continued for some days afterwards as well as I tried to remember all the different things I needed to do (hello spreadsheet to do list). I hate being an adult!
AnnaTheApple recently posted…Working on my winter insulation layer 😉
Was happy to help, glad you are all moved in and settled.
p.s you missed off the word “super” from before my name 😉
Haha you definitely deserve the ‘Super’!
AnnaTheApple recently posted…Working on my winter insulation layer 😉
Oh I FEEL you here girl!! Moving was by far the most stressful thing EVER. We ended up leaving so much behind because in the end, we just ran out of room! We were supposed to have all these friends helping us, and it was only my father in law in the end. O-well. At least its over with now, right?? Now just take your time, unpack, and enjoy your new place!
Kat recently posted…Mint N’ Chip Energy Bites [Raw, Vegan & Paleo]
It’s so hard. I couldn’t have done it without the help – and I didn’t even have that much stuff!! It was just a lot of stairs to keep going up and down…and organising.
AnnaTheApple recently posted…Working on my winter insulation layer 😉
It is so stressful! Well done! I am tired just reading your post!
We were lucky, when we moved here we moved out of our parents homes so we could move in bit by bit. We might start looking in the new year for something a bit bigger, but I really can’t face the thought of packing and not knowing the moving date and things. That cake looks good, and very well deserved too 🙂
Maria @ runningcupcake recently posted…Poppy challenge 2015
It’s a very stressful process mainly caused by the very strict timelines. You really need to have everything ready to go on the day of completion. But it’s done now, whew!
AnnaTheApple recently posted…Working on my winter insulation layer 😉
OMG that sounds awful! Moving is just the worst. Glad you’re getting settled in though!
Hehe me too 🙂
AnnaTheApple recently posted…Working on my winter insulation layer 😉
Moving is always so stressful! But once the dust settles you can feel incredibly proud and excited that you have your own place to make your own, however you want 🙂
Beki @MissWheezy recently posted…Top 5 Reasons to Join a Run Club
My own little space 😀
AnnaTheApple recently posted…Working on my winter insulation layer 😉
Congratulation! I know that you have been waiting ages to move. Moving is such a stressful thing to do, but so worth it when you’re in. I hope you feel settled and at home soon.
Jemma @ Celery and Cupcakes recently posted…5 Simple Ways To Send The Food Guilt Packing and Enjoy The Festive Season
Thanks Jemma. So glad it’s all done and sorted now. Whew.
AnnaTheApple recently posted…Working on my winter insulation layer 😉
Congratulations on your move! While the actual moving is such a pain, I bet it feels like a great relief!
We moved in August. Thankfully we were at the bottom of the chain as first time buyers. We’d planned to be out over the course of a weekend (we were renting and our landlords were great), but turns out we weren’t as organised as we thought. Also, our vendors weren’t as organised as they thought. There was a hold up confirming that the funds had been received by their solicitor (they “forgot” to tell the agents), and we didn’t get in until gone 5pm and lost half a day of moving time. I was very glad for my family’s help – Mum and Dad cleaned while my sister, husband and I lifted and shifted.
I’ve told Matt that we’re not moving for the foreseeable future (and I am talking decades!).
Steph recently posted…How to survive Christmas shopping
Jeeze it’s never easy is it!? Sounds like a bit of a mare. My chain was actually quite simple as the person buying my house was an investor so wasn’t actually moving in and the person I bought from was an investor and the previous tenant had moved out ages ago, but it was still complicated.
AnnaTheApple recently posted…Working on my winter insulation layer 😉
I am very much of the opinion that it is worth spending the money to have a professional moving company pack everything into the van, and then, at the other end, take it out of the van and put it all in the right rooms (my friend with a baby also had the moving company pack everything into the boxes, but says she did end up moving an awful lot of stuff that probably didn’t need moving). It’s not cheap, but having heard two horror stories of vans, keys, tetris and panic in the last week (the friends who took 7 hours for one round trip, and finished that at 5.30am …), I feel it has saved my sanity. *sends hugs and good food and lots of chocolate and apples, and melted chocolate to dip apples in* Plus, burly moving men are easy on the eye 😉 And they were very polite. They kept asking if it was OK to use the loo!
While, two weeks later, we are still living in a degree of chaos, at the end of the first day, we had the kitchen and bedroom sorted. And it was all much easier to cope with.
Jane recently posted…Nat West have Lost the Paperwork. Again.
Luckily I didn’t really have that much stuff having culled a lot of superfluous items previously and not taking any furniture with me… but it was still laborious. In the future I think having someone come and remove stuff would work well! Glad to hear yours is going well too 🙂
AnnaTheApple recently posted…Working on my winter insulation layer 😉
Congrats!! This is so exciting!! Packing, moving, all that can be so stressful and hectic, but it’s such a relief when it’s done. Congrats my friend!
Cailee recently posted…Hello Healthy COOKIES!
Thanks 🙂 It’s nice that it’s done!
AnnaTheApple recently posted…Working on my winter insulation layer 😉
I think moving house has to be one of the most stressful things ever. Still, at least you are finally in now! Hope you are settling in to your new home!
Lauren (@poweredbypb) recently posted…Mio Natural Skincare Review
Yeah I don’t think I fully realised quite how stressful it would be… but it’s DONE. Never moving again 😉
AnnaTheApple recently posted…Working on my winter insulation layer 😉