Last week was not fun ya’ll. And there is no such thing as “Moving Day.” Sure, the truck may come and go in one day, but let’s be honest, it takes days to move – esp. a 5 bedroom house. Last weekend was my self-proclaimed packing party – Drew and P want up to NC to take care of closing on our rental house and then on to Va Tech for the football game (Go Hokies!) and I went to town deciding that I wanted to see if I could get everything packed before the movers came and save some money. It sucked. According to my FitBit I walked 21,129 steps on Saturday and 17,510 on Sunday…that’s 16 miles of walking around a 3 story house. I got a ton done, but I also realized we still have too much STUFF…and most of it is honestly meaningless…it fills spaces on the wall or sits on a shelf gathering dust and that is going to stop.

Purging is hard. We like our stuff. We like what it says about us (or what we think it says about us) and we like how it makes us feel. And then we meet an AMAZING AT&T internet installer named Brandon (because Xfinity sucks and Comcast is the worst company ever) and because he’s been at your house for a few hours AFTER he finished your internet hookup trying to help you with your Direct TV, you learn that he was born and raised in Gulfport and lost everything but the clothes on his back in Hurricane Katrina. Like his family had to just get in their car and go and that’s how they ended up in the ATL.

I asked him what he missed and he had a great baseball collection that he had to leave behind. One thing. That’s it. Now look around at all of your stuff and think about what you would really miss. What is it? Your pictures, your artwork, your clothes, your kitchen stuff (guilty). Talking to someone who has actually lost everything, makes you realize how much of the “stuff” we don’t really need. (Read this article if you aren’t convinced)

Back to moving. Ugh. See that…I tried to avoid it because it really was tough. I felt horrible for the AMAZING team from College Hunks when they drove up and looked up our driveway. Plus it was hot on Tuesday – like 90° hot at the end of September. But they came in and got to it and I cannot tell you how impressed I was with our crew (thank you Jordan, Nate, William, Chad and Rico if you ever see this). I wish I had gotten a pic of the crew at the beginning and end of the day, because while I know they were WHOPPED, their smiles never left their faces right up until they pulled out of our new driveway at 7:30 pm. The 3 stories and ridiculously heavy furniture I own (thank you I.O. Metro) and that stupid driveway of ours wore them out.

The best part of the whole day [sarcasm] was when the five of them came outside at the new house and said “Um, ma’am, we are out of room in the bedrooms.” And we still had the 2nd truck to unload. So, I made the executive decision to turn our great room into a temporary storage unit and voila, here we are.  Ain’t nobody getting through that room for a few days. If you think that’s bad, just wait until you see my “kitchen.” (That post is on the way)

I will, however, pat myself on the back for my packing prowess. Our moving quote came in at $4298.00 and at the end of the day, we spent just over $2300 (I saved the $160/hr packing fee, sold a TON of furniture that had been in the original quote, AND this team seriously was like robot packers and did not stop moving for one second). Not bad for a weekend’s worth of packing. Hmmmm, I wonder what stuff I should buy with all of that money I saved…