For those of you that have been wondering where I disappeared to this time...we moved....again...Over the years that I have been writing my blog there have been many times I have moved and most of the time it has disrupted my writing. This time has been no different. I have been able to get back to many things and have finally found a little time to write again too. I am excited to start sharing some of the projects we have done. Some of the home-school activities the girls have completed, no they are no longer in public school and yeah that's a long story we will have to save for later. Today, I want to start by sharing a little about our move and how it went though and we'll get to those other stories later.
At the end of December 2016 we made a big move from VA to NH and what a move it has been! The transition has been bumpy, to say the least, but things seem to finally be calming down a little bit. We are getting settled down in our new home, new school routines, new Cub Scout Pack and new town. Over the years we have moved many times and the last few places we haven't even taken the time to really unpack and decorate or even completely unpack at all. This has really been weighing on me as I have labored to open and inspect the contents of each box that we moved yet again. I have been downsizing a lot, which I probably would have done more of before moving had I had to pack it all...smh...we have got a lot of stuff. One day I'll have to tell you about the town "Trading Post". I get myself into trouble there...lol...but it has been a great place to drop off our "excess" stuff for sure and get a few new treasures too.
This is the biggest move we have ever made, over 700 miles away from "home"!!! My husband had been offered a new position in a new location, as the company he worked for moved and merged with it's parent company. We had to choose between staying close to family and him taking a lesser job, starting over with a new company again, or worse...unemployment....OR we could make a big move, far away, to a place that had a job waiting for him. We thought a lot about it and decided moving forward instead of backwards was the best, obvious and only choice for us.
Luckily a moving company came as part of the job offer my husband received and made the move possible. After showing two companies our belongings we were assigned United Van Rentals. I thought that it was going to be great at first, but I quickly found that I didn't like handing over the work when it meant I wasn't really in control of the packing anymore. It was a very stressful process to live through. I was able to gather like things and watch as they were packed-up, but when the pile was gone and the box wasn't full...in went random stuff! My good wool coat got packed in the 30 minutes the moving company beat me back to the house and we moved North in the middle of winter. Otherwise, it went well enough, until the movers realized just how much stuff we had and they started getting tired. By the end I saw a fish tank get wrapped in nothing more than packing paper heading for the truck and my collection of "Friends" DVD's wrapped in shrink wrap, neither having a green bar-code or orange sticker indicating it was ours. Though I was skeptical, and rightly so, I wondered if the fish tank could actually make it without extra protection...from say a box?...but I was getting tired too, so I let it slide. Everything else that had been packed seemed reasonably protected, except for maybe the fishing poles that were bunched up and secured with tape... I got stickers for both of these items and even climbed through one of the trucks to ensure they were labeled....but my efforts paid off and the collection made it from point A to point B without further issue...the fish tank on the other hand ended up with one side busted out...bummer :(
It took me about a month and a half to open and inspect everything. As far as I can tell nothing got lost, but we did have some additional damages. My jewelry box no longer has legs, the office chair has a broken wheel, a fishing pole got the tip broke off, a couple of pictures lost the glass for their frames and a figurine is missing a finger, too. Overall, not a huge loss, but with any loss comes the process of filing a claim. We have 6 months to file, but as I suspected that time is flying by pretty fast! Now to get back to working on getting the claim form filled out and turned in and see what happens! Wish me luck!
Pictured below are the "broken" things.
Overall, so far, United Van Rentals has provided good service, not excellent, but good. I would give them a 3.5/5 star rating now, but maybe their claims process will help that rating go up. The truck driver remained professional at all times and made his delivery within the estimated time frame. Though we would have preferred a faster turn around, weather and our stuff being moved on the same truck as two other families at the same time had something to do with that. The packers got impatient and didn't let the driver take the furniture apart so the only thing he knew how to assemble was the kitchen table. We arrived at our new home 7 full days before our belongings did and as hard as we tried we couldn't get everything we would need to go that long without our "stuff" in the car with all of us. That became a costly wait and an uncomfortable wait. That part was pretty miserable at times, but we made the best of it and came out with some pretty good memories none-the-less. Lastly, the move included unpacking services, and though I wanted them to unpack a few boxes, I had to watch for the boxes to come in and unpack them myself to ensure they were unpacked while the movers were still on site. Otherwise, I guess I would have had to authorize a full unpack and it just all wouldn't have fit... It was a stretch to get it all in boxed up let alone laid out on any flat surface they could find... lol. I have read many worse moves than mine and I am glad things went as well as they did!
