Moving, Moving, Moving!
At this point in our relocation adventure, Andy and I have concurred we are never, EVER moving again. This will indeed be our forever home! I am amazed at the complex logistic coordination involved in this move! The following blog post is a record of this complexity. It should be noted that by the time this blog post goes live, we should (in theory) be completely moved into our new FOREVER HOME in Palisade. That said, we are still in the thick of moving while I am writing this post… think of it as time travel, some of this will be in the past tense, some in the present and some in the future tense!
The Past (recap)
I’ve already written about the first stage, where we moved out of our house and everything into storage with a small amount to the apartment. The next stage as we moved closer to our closing date involved a number of steps, starting with me renting a climate-controlled storage unit in Grand Junction and us moving a load of our breakables and a limited number of furnishings so that once we do close on the house, we can start living in it ASAP! To make the U-Haul loading easier, he and I spent a couple of weekend afternoons at the storage unit locating as much artwork and breakables as we could find and any poorly packed items as well as the above-mentioned furnishings and consolidated them in one area of the storage unit.
That step completed, the next one involved moving all the girls’ things out of storage and into the apartment. We did this and now there are mountains of boxes in their 900 square foot apartment along with four adults and two dogs, as Andy, Daisy, Molly, and I have not yet moved out of as of the writing of this blog post! This small apartment is getting smaller by the day.
While I packed up what little Andy and I brought with us, I also got estimates from three professional movers, Mayflower, Allied and United, for the purpose of moving the bulk of our things over the mountain. I was anticipating it being expensive, but sadly I underestimated by a few thousand dollars! Granted their quote is based on weight so I’m hoping by us moving a quarter of it ourselves the price will be less but as it stands it will cost us between $8,000 -$9,000 to move our things from Denver to Palisade! This blows my mind… twenty years ago it cost us something like $5,000 to move from Ohio to Colorado! We decided to go with Mayflower because their price was not the highest nor was it the lowest… I’ve learned (the hard way) to never go with the lowest!
The Present
So, with the Movers lined up, and apartment packing still underway, the next step is Andy reserving another U-Haul truck for our final relocation trip over the mountain. Obviously, we will be back often to visit the girls, but we won’t be moving a household when we visit! Another lesson we learned in this regard is that U-Haul’s are hard to find at the end and the beginning of the month, which of course is exactly when we need it! When we took our first load over the mountain, we had to first drive to Colorado Springs to get the only available U-Haul! Andy is working hard to find one that is closer for this next trip.
The Future
Our plan is to load the U-Haul the day before we close. Our realtor arranged for us to close on the house in Denver verses in Grand Junction. The plan is we close in the morning and once that’s done Andy drives the U-Haul and I take Daisy and Molly in my car and off we go!
The following week, I will head back over the mountain after my last class on Wednesday. Pick up any ceramics at the League I couldn’t nab the week before, tie up any loose ends regarding appoints etc.… and then on Friday, meet the movers from Mayflower and oversee them moving the remainder of our belongs. In all, it should be about a six-hour babysitting job. Once that’s done, I will send the evening at my mom’s and return to Palisade Saturday morning. With a bit of luck, that should be the conclusion of our move and then… the unpacking begins!
