Boxed out …

There’s a book to be written about moving.

It would be horror.

I have finally located officially to South Carolina, the low country, where the seafood is fresh, the scenery achingly beautiful and the traffic into Hilton Head enough to make you want to buy a gun.

Anyway, I’m here. I told you I’d be back and I am. Keep your applause until the end, please.

As I mentioned earlier, we decided we’d pack ourselves to save some money. Bad idea. Terrible idea. The worst idea in the history of ideas.

To start, we bought a ton of boxes from the moving company. We ran out in a day. Went back to the moving company and bought some more. We ran out in a day.

Embarrassed, we started buying boxes from Staples. We made so many box-buying trips that as I walked into the store, one of the clerks said, “The usual?”

At the end, we were throwing things into anything with four corners and a top. We used about 300 miles of packing tape and enough paper to print a daily newspaper. If daily newspapers still existed.

The movers came on time, tho, and in between phone calls to friends and business partners – one young mover discussed a business plan for a juice bar in downtown Cincinnati – they managed to get everything on the truck.

Then we got in a car and drove south.

And had to UNLOAD all those boxes.

The thing about moving is this: In your old home, everything had its place. In your new home, nothing has a place. You gotta figure it out.

So, while we were doing that, we had folks from a nationally known home store, whose name will remain unsaid but rhymes with hose, delivered a new washer and dryer and refrigerator. They were SUPPOSED to hook up everything, but left without connecting the dryer, switching the hot and cold hoses on the washer, and leaving the fridge in many pieces/parts.

The movers on this end somehow managed to put the guest bed’s headboard on backwards, despite the sticker that said THIS IS THE BACK.

And we had to UNLOAD all those boxes.

So. Many. Boxes.

Stacked in the garage. From side to side. From floor to ceiling.  The car has to be parked in the driveway.

Then there’s the money. Or should I say no money. Besides buying a new townhome, and the washer, and the dryer, and the fridge, we’ve had to buy a new bedroom set, a new dining room table, new dining room chairs, new bar stools, a new TV, window treatments, and built-ins for the closets, the office and the living room.

At last check, my bank account has 33 cents remaining.

Only good thing about that?

Can’t afford to buy another box.