It has been an intense week. With less than 24 hours left of it, I feel completely happy and ready to sit down and relax.
What did I do? We moved.
It all started Friday afternoon. New keys in hand, we had a big moving car booked for 24 hours Saturday to Sunday, and arranged to borrow a smaller car for the evening just to get started with a few boxes.
After arriving at that car and finding its battery dead, we decided to head over to the rental station and see if we could get something just for the evening. We got there, talked to them and mentioned we had a reservation for Saturday to Sunday. The person behind the counter pointed and clicked for a while, took our details a few times, then stated that in fact no, there was no reservation. Great. A few minutes passed while we discussed getting something, what might be available and for how long. All the while, the person kept pointing and clicking. Only then did the person notice that there was a reservation in our name, but for the wrong 24 hours. It had been entered as Friday to Saturday, but they were happy to let us start our 24 hours right now instead. (We later asked ourselves if nobody thought to get in touch when we did not show up until hours after they thought our reservation was starting.) Great, we finally had our big, burly car and spent the evening running up and down stairs, emptying storage rooms and then carrying stuff up to the new apartment as the sun set. It felt increasingly strange to be running around carrying boxes, vacuum cleaners and other less well-packed stuff on a city street as it got darker. The last little while, I also started worrying we were annoying neighbors. In any case, all went well but energy was clearly draining, and as we headed home and for bed we felt more drained than eager to dive into Saturday’s work. This had been the smaller part, Saturday not only meant a lot more things, but a lot more large, heavy and unweildy things.
Happily sunlight, an extra pair of hands and legs and a little bit of accumulated experience from the day before made all the difference. Spirits were high, progress felt much faster and suddenly we were handing back the car having moved everything we hoped for and just a little bit more. I was aching pretty much everywhere and we were living in boxes upon boxes, but we were super happy that we went for getting everything moved on Saturday and actually had Sunday to settle down just a little bit.
Not that I am super good at just ignoring boxes. Things to unpack, position and generally take care of provide, I think, too much of a sense of progress and easy wins. I happened to be home alone the whole work week, and I have had to tear myself from unpacking to do other things. There is always one more box which could be emptied and put away, one more piece of furniture which could find its place, or even just a box which could be moved to a better room for unpacking.
Tonight, I reached the final milestone as I took delivery of our new sofa. All 111 kilograms in two pieces, wrapped in tremendous amounts of plastic. I was not sure I would be able to put it together by myself, so the satisfaction was even greater when it turned out I did.
I was not only satisfied, but surprisingly sweaty, surrounded by a mountain of packing material, and in real need of some grocery shopping and dinner. Only a couple of hours later, all these tasks taken care of, did it occur to me that I had not yet even tried to sit down on the sofa.
Now I am, and I feel ready for the weekend and the rest of the family to return home.
Nästa mål: få undan alla packningar, dammsug och moppa överallt. Få med en mopp hit.