If I have learned anything from our recent house move, it is that
the great thing about appearances is that, true enough, they are
deceiving.
If you visited our house, you'd think we have moved in. Oh, we live
here. You can tell because the TV is set up, the computer is
plugged in, and there is a pile of mail on the table. Well, two
piles. Okay, three.
But don't be fooled.
We moved
into this house three months ago. But we are not
moved
in.
We stopped moving in around the time that we got a table to eat at,
a couch to sit on, and a bed to sleep in.
"Don't worry," a friend told me. "The last 10 percent always takes
90 percent of the effort."
So, what does the last, oh, 60 percent take?
THINGS DIDN'T start out this way.
After both moving vans left -
Both? you say. Yes, both. As
in two? Two, yes, two moving vans. And not just any vans, but those
giant, takes-up-14-parking-spaces vans, packed to their metal roofs
with the stuff of lives that collect clutter like the universe
collects matter. And, like the universe's matter, it is a bunch of
stuff I don't understand. "Why do we have this?" "Because we might
use it someday." "We haven't used it in 10 years. In fact, we never
used it. We never even liked it." "We might use it. I sorta like
it." "Okay, okay, forget it. Throw it in the box."
Okay, where was I? Oh yeah, after the two vans pulled away from our
house, we dug right in.
The first day, we were a furniture-
arranging, box-opening, kitchen-stuff-putting-away machine. A lot
of that had to do with a consultant we hired. Actually, she's not a
consultant. And technically, we didn't hire her, although I count
the promise of a dinner sometime down the road as pretty much the
same thing.
Her name is Marion. She has a screw loose, because she is still our
friend even after helping us on each of the four moves we've made
in the last five years. (Considering the number of moves, I guess
when it comes to loose screws, it takes one to know one.)
Marion is not just type A. She is type Double A. When confronted
with a task, whether it's making dinner for an army of her kids'
friends or arranging for a vacation or writing another book (she
has around six of them now, I think), she takes no prisoners, no
guff, and most of all, no lollygaggin'.
She arrived in the morning, and by the time she left that evening,
we had a facsimile of a real home. Bookcases were filled. Glassware
was put away. Electronic equipment was hooked up. Records (yes,
vinyl) were alphabetized.
Granted, we still had a lot of what I call the for-nows. "That?
Sure, that's fine there - for now." At least we had gotten enough
put away that we had a pathway from the refrigerator to the
bathroom.
Jessica and I kept the momentum going for a while, and then, one
weekend, we took a breather.
We didn't organize the pantry. We didn't put away CDs. We didn't
hang clothes that seemed to be breeding in their tall wardrobe
boxes.
What we did was go to the movies. And eat out. Regular stuff, stuff
that nonmoving people do.
It was glorious. Wondrous. Technicolorous. But it also leads me to
a bit of advice for any of you currently or soon to be moving:
Never take a breather.
Moving is the enemy. You don't work with it. You don't negotiate
with it. You beat the livin' unprintable out of it. You keep it on
the run. You must be merciless. Ruthless. It's black-and-white. You
or it. You take a breather, it seizes on your weakness and, little
by little, takes back its territory. "Wasn't going to a movie
great?" it hisses in your ear. "Go again next weekend." And you do.
And before you know it, you are living in a house where you can't
tell the unpacked from the lived-in.
Don’t let happen to you what happened to us. Look around our house. Pictures lean against the walls, unhung. Boxes are tucked discreetly beneath a drop-leaf table behind the couch. The peanut butter is on the same shelf as the
potato chips, for cryin’ out loud.
Oh, and all those for-nows? They’re fast becoming forevers.
But, hey, they look okay where they are. And sometimes looks are all that matters.