Organised Chaos!

I have no idea why I decided to vacuum before the removal men came. Complete waste of time!

I thought I had a good system. Green stickers for rental. Red stickers for storage. All cupboards & shelves marked with stickers. Boxes we packed labelled with R or S + room / contents. Similar things grouped together for easy packing. Some boxes taken to the "new" house. Plants & some garden furniture to go there too. Stuff for charity or Freegle gone. Rubbish gone. A plan of position of furniture for rental.

A lot of time & effort planning, sorting & packing.

Removal men very hardworking - a very physically demanding job. Quite stressful too. 9.30 - 2.30 constant work.

Once they started it was utterly exhausting. 2 men packing for a day - lots of queries. Me up & down stairs constantly. Because there were 2, I was on the go all day. At the end the house was literally stuffed with boxes. Movement was limited. 

When I came to cook supper I discovered that they had emptied my kitchen cupboards of everything apart from a drawer of cutlery, a shelf of crockery & a cupboard of cereals. Even my bread bin had gone! No sharp knives, cooking utensils, trays or oven gloves. No food, other than what was in the fridge freezer. I thought that the rental stuff would wait till the day of the actual move so I could use it in the 2 intervening days (3 suppers, lunches & breakfasts). 

When I went to bed I realised that my bedroom curtains had gone. Fortunately I have an eye mask.

Today was moving stuff to storage - A hugely time consuming process. Big yellow is extremely well organised & the 3 men I spoke to were really helpful & lovely with it. But lots of information to go through & paperwork, even though I had done a lot in advance online. Then the keypad code didn't work so a lot of hanging around again. But everything went into the unit. It was very tight though. No chance of being able to get at anything now although technically I do have access. Given how tightly the removers must have packed it I do wonder what state things will come out again. I didn't see it go into the lorry or going into the store. I don't know how protected things like leather settees are protected. The facility is amazing - a little village of different sized storage units with streets!

Now peace reigns. I am about to tidy up & vacuum all the dust up so that I feel tidy & organised. Nothing is happening tomorrow. I just have to go to the rental to let BT in.

Thursday is actually moving to the rental. 

I will be so glad when this is over.

 

 

Data Overload

I have a sheet of A4 with actions I need to take on moving house. Each organisation has their own way of dealing with change of contact details. If you are techie & lucky you can do it on line. Doing it on the phone is often safer because you are talking to a human being who actually understands what needs to be done. The ones I have spoken too - eventually - have been really helpful.

The worst organisations are the insurers. Hours wasted coping with menus & selecting from up to 6 options. Holding on. Dreadful music. Repeating information because the people who answer the phone & the underwriters don't have the same information on their system.The most helpful have been Thames Water & Octopus Energy. British Gas & SSE are uncontactable on the phone. Either too many phone calls or too few people, or both. 

Many organisations don't have the facility to notify a move in advance, banks for example. So you have to wait until you have actually moved & then change your details. As if you haven't got enough to do unpacking & settling in!

I am so fed up with it. In this technological age you would think that it would be possible to have some centralised website with a list of all the people anyone needs to notify. You then tick as appropriate, inpout your old details & the new ones, then everyone gets the information.

Well there is - sort of. But I've only just discovered it.

www.iammoving.com 

It takes a while to get the hang of it & in my case because I am selling, buying & renting it's a lot more complicated. It isn't possible to do it for some organisations. I only ended up with 9. But it shows it can be done. There just need to be more options.

Moving is getting closer & I've hardly started the packing!