We moved again, kind of

I've figured out the secret to moving. Don't do it yourself. Don't hire movers. Don't ask just anybody you know to help you. No, the secret to moving is this: Ask a few MBA/MS (or as I think MIT calls it, SM?) students who are right in the middle of their finals week to help you. I promise you, you'll be moved out of one place and in to the next so fast you won't even know what just happened.

We started moving stuff around 3:15 into the 14 foot UHAUL we rented and, I kid you not, around 5:30 we were finished moving everything into the studio apartment and discussing where we should eat dinner. Chuck said when he went in to return the truck the guy working said "Whoa! You're back already!?" I think we may have just made moving history. I wish every move could be just like this one.

Chuck's awesome summer LGO team members were our moving helpers. There were 5 of them and then the 2 of us. And they were the best movers, not just because they are engineers and business people who are naturally just good at things like organizing a truck full of stuff and being efficient, but they are in the midst of finals week. They are so busy they're barely sleeping right now.  I'm sure they all had a million other things to be doing other than helping us move, so when helping, they wanted to get it done as fast as possible. It was perfect!

This has me thinking now about starting a moving business that only employs very busy grad students as movers and promises highly efficient and fast moves to our customers. Also, the grad students are paid in free pizza and beer instead of money. Hmmm... I think I'm on to something here....

So we have to be out of Eastgate by 9 am this Friday, but we can't get into our new apartment until we get back from Kentucky.  Luckily for us, there is an empty studio apartment in the same building as our new apartment where we moved all of the stuff yesterday to store it while we're gone. So we are sleeping at Eastgate on an air mattress until Friday, while all of our things sit in "storage" until we get back.  Here is what we currently have in our apartment with us: air mattress, pillows, a fan, two lamps, suitcases already packed and ready to go home, bathroom essentials and the ingredients for chocolate milk.  Oh and some crackers. Friday cannot come soon enough.

I wanted to post some pictures of the moving process but it happened so fast I didn't even have time to snap any pictures. But here are a couple I took before the move.

Our progress as of Sunday afternoon. The TV was the last thing we packed. :)

After I had already packed the silverware all away at the bottom of a large box and taped it all up, we found this lone fork still in the sink. I was not about to unpack the box the rest of the silverware was in, so this fork ended up in a random box and will be a fun surprise when we're unpacking in a couple of weeks.

Here's a video taken by Yannai, one of Chuck's teammates and one of our movers, while we were driving the truck from Eastgate to the new place. Two of the bikers you see on the road were two other teammates/movers. I'm pretty sure the guys on bike got to the apartment before we did with the truck. Thanks for the video, Yannai!

4 weeks

In the next 4 weeks, here is a list of things that will happen.

We will re-pack our entire apartment and get ready to move.
We will move everything to storage in our new building for the week we are in KY because our apartment is not available until we get back. 
Chuck will finish the summer session of school.
We will finish planning our wedding.
We will fly to Louisville and spend a week there.
We will get married.
We will come back to Boston and Chuck will immediately start the fall semester.
We will move everything into our new apartment and unpack. 

I had to buy a mouth guard last week to keep me from grinding my teeth while I sleep. Chuck said it was so loud sometimes when he was up late doing homework, he could hear me from the other room. Oh and did I mention that the week we have to move our stuff out of Eastgate is the same week Chuck has finals?

If everyone could say a little prayer for our sanity over the next month, it would be greatly appreciated.

Scary Closet: Part 2

This week I finished cleaning out the Scary Closet. This time was way less scary than the first. I didn't find anything nearly as exciting as a cow collage or any other really old electronic devices, but I did find a couple of gems. Starting with....

An old tutu from my dancing days. I have no idea why I still have this. I only wore it for one performance ever but I guess I loved it too much to get rid of it. Underneath the tutu I found my dance bag with all of my old dance shoes in it, as well as a box FULL of my other dance recital costumes.  So much fringe and glitter and sequins in one box... You have no idea.
Kept or trashed: Kept, with plans to give to Goodwill so someone can use this as an awesome Halloween costume someday.

Old softball trophies. Who doesn't have a few of these things lying around? As you can see, I was obviously never on a winning team. Most of these are all "Participation Trophies" aka "Trophies you get for showing up so that your feelings aren't hurt when you lose."  The two big trophies you see aren't even for first place. One is for second place in the league and the other is for second place in the tournament, both in 1998.  That was the year I played "bench warmer" every game and hated the coach and people on my team so much that I showed up to the end of the season team pool party, asked for my trophies, and immediately left without even going inside.
Kept or trashed: Kept. Too much time and effort went into 8 years of softball to throw those babies away.

Creepy framed picture of dolls having tea?
Kept or trashed: Trashed! Immediately! I'm going to be haunted by this picture for weeks.

This was a fun surprise to find.  Yes, this is a Frodo bobblehead, still in the box. Chuckie bought me this for Christmas the first year we were dating.  He got me several gifts that year and this was one of them. I can't even explain it because I don't really remember why he got me this. But I love that I still have it and I love that I thought it was too valuable to take out of the box.
Kept or trashed: Kept, for the memories.

So there you have it. Nothing else too exciting came out of this round of cleaning. I found a lot of marbles, old CDs, craft supplies, notes and drawings from people from high school, and all of my drum major binders and trumpet books. Some things got to stay, but two more bags of trash were taken out at the end of the night. So now... my closet is ready to be filled with storage bins of the things I DID save. 

Looking good already!

I still have a few areas of my room to sort through where stuff is just stored (i.e. under my bed, the other closet, in my night stand...) so I may post more pictures at that time if I find anything worth sharing. But so far I'm feeling very content with my plan.

Scary Closet: Part 1

Yesterday I started the packing process. I started cleaning out Closet #2, the scary closet. It was, like I thought, a little scary but not quite the black hole I was expecting. I only got about 1/3 of the way through it before I got tired and had to stop. At times it was really tough to decide if I should save or trash some things. I filled one and a half trash bags and one small storage bin. And just like I thought, I found some real treats in there.

My first big find? My "homies"!!!! I'm not sure if "homies" are still a thing or not, but when I was in high school, you could find these little guys in the machines next to all the gumball and ancient candy machines. Liz and I used to collect them and keep them randomly in our cars and purses.
Kept or trashed: Kept!

This picture is of a note I found folded up in a little glass bowl with some old barrettes from when I was little. It's from Laura and I'm not sure how old we were when this was written but judging by the handwriting, she was pretty young. On the back of the note it said "Love, Laura."

Kept or trashed: Kept, of course! Who would throw that away?

I chose to share this find for several reasons. First, I thought it was only appropriate, with Titanic being re-released in theatres this month. Second, I remember when my grandma gave me this I thought it was the coolest jewelry box ever. And third, I think it's hilarious that the Heart of the Ocean is missing from the top. Where is it?? That thing is worth millions! Maybe I pulled it off and dropped it off the side of a boat in the middle of the ocean so no one else could ever own it? (If you don't get this Titanic reference, you must not have seen the movie 4 times in the theatre and 400 times on VHS like me.)

Kept or trashed: Kept. (Can't throw away something you remember your grandma giving you.)

I'm not really going to take the time to explain this one. You'll just have to wonder about it. Yes. It's a collage of cow pictures. Yes it's titled "Rachel's Moolage."  Yes this was a high school graduation gift.

Kept or trashed: Kept. But I have no idea what to do with it.

At the end of the Governor's Scholars Program I attended summer before my senior year of high school, our hall voted on awards for every girl in the hall. On our last night together, we presented each other with these awards. This is what I won. So proud. This was when my Spiderman obsession was apparently way out of hand.

Kept or trashed: It's in the "undecided pile" for now. Will probably throw away though.

And last, but CERTAINLY not least... I found these three gems all together in the bottom of the closet. Thank God I started my hoarding at such a young age so I now have these things to show my future children so they can think I grew up in the stone age. Seriously. A Gameboy, a walkman and a discman. Jackpot!!!!!

Kept or trashed: Kept, duh!

I found many more exciting items like the stuffed fish my dad used to hit me with in the mornings to wake me up in middle school, a plethora of stuffed animals, Pez dispensers, bouncy balls, journals and much more. I realize it seems I kept a lot more than I threw away, but can you blame me? Those homies will be worth something some day... Right?

I hope to get through the rest of the closet some time this week or next weekend.  No telling what I'll find next but I'll give you a sneak preview- I saw a tutu and a ridiculous amount of softball trophies in the back left corner... 

Packing: The first step

When I graduated from college, my parents were gracious enough to let me move back in with them until I was ready to move out and live on my own. I'm not sure when they told me that they thought I'd end up staying for 3 years. But I did. And (I think) they've been ok with it. I think I've been a pretty good roommate! I pay my own bills, I watch whatever they want to watch on TV without (too much) complaining and I'm not too messy... With one exception. MY ROOM. Now, let me just put out there that I am a pretty clean and organized person in general. Seriously. My desk at work is so clean all the time. But for some reason when it comes to my room, I just can't keep the thing clean. My parents like to comment on it often, to which I usually respond "Try cramming every single thing YOU own into one little bedroom and see what it looks like!"  And I think that's a pretty good argument! Because when you think about it, really, almost every single thing I own, from childhood until now, is in that room.

So when I found out Chuckie and I were moving, I came up with a plan.  I will pack two separate piles: "Things I am taking to Boston" and "Things I am leaving at Mom and Dad's for the next 2 years." The things that are going to Boston will be packed into boxes we can easily break down and store or recycle once we're in our new place, and the things staying at mom and dad's will be packed nicely into several nice $5 Target storage bins and fit into the two closets in my room.

I've been thinking about how to start the packing process and I came up with a plan of action. The first step is to clean out my two closets so I will have space to start storing things when I box them up. This may sound like an easy task to some, until you see my closets.

Closet #1: All clothes, shoes, purses and blankets/sheets/towels. Not too bad.

Closet #2: Anything and everything that I've saved from about age 5 that I don't use on a regular basis.

Closet #2 scares me.  I don't know what it is about this closet but it's where things just... accumulate.  I'm scared. When I clean it out, will it be like a black hole? Will I get into it and disappear forever? What kinds of things will I find? Will the contents I find in this closet make me a certified hoarder? Stay tuned....