Moving Help

We have finally, finally, given up and hired help with moving. In general, John prefers we do stuff ourselves when we can, while I will more often want to hire help.

The advantages of the DIY approach is it’s cheaper, and John likes to be able to do it his way (the right way), on his timeframe. And he doesn’t like the process of hiring and overseeing help, and he definitely doesn’t like fixing it when someone else does it wrong.

On the other hand, I delegate as much as I can. I don’t mind the process of hiring and overseeing help. And I like to get things done faster than we can do them if we’re doing everything ourselves. And I believe in hiring local help and putting some money into the local economy. And I think it makes sense to hire people who are good at what they do, because we’re amateurs at everything except our own professions. I think it’s more effective and efficient to spend our time doing the things we’re good at, and let someone else do the things they specialize in. I also think John undervalues his time.

Plus, I just think we’re working way too hard. John has a lot more energy than I do, but even he has not been himself for a few months now. It’s like our first year in California when John was in a very difficult new job and we were doing a major remodel.

Finally over this weekend I hurt my back dragging around some new trees, trying to decide exactly how to place them.

They’re going on our back slope to screen the neighbor’s house.

My back is slowly getting better, but I could hardly walk on Sunday. So Monday morning I hired a moving company to do the rest because I’m not doing anymore lifting.

We have about half of the moving left to do. So far we have the boxes from Placitas moved in, the washer & dryer from Santa Fe moved in, and some furniture. And we’ve loaded the POD in Santa Fe and it’s up there waiting for the POD company to drive it down to Albuquerque.

What’s left to do is unload the POD, plus move all the furniture and decorations that are staging the house in Placitas. The POD doesn’t arrive until July 8 (because we didn’t know how long it would take us to load it, so we didn’t schedule soon enough and now they are booked and we have to wait).

We don’t want to remove the furniture from the Placitas house until it clears inspections (which should happen by the end of this week unless we need to redo the septic system). Once we’ve cleared inspections, we’ll be fairly certain that the sale will go through.

So in the end, I have movers scheduled for July 11. It will be nice to have everything in one place, and finally be done with moving. This is the longest and most drawn out moving process I’ve ever done. We started this project in April.

Meanwhile, as of yesterday, I am advertising the Santa Fe townhome for rent. I’ve had lots of inquiries, and will be going up there later this afternoon to show it to several interested parties.

We still have some give-away items in the garage up in Santa Fe, and I have some coworkers from my old job coming over at the same time to look through the stuff in the garage. So that’s all going to be way too many people and too much confusion for my comfort level, but hopefully it all goes well, and my coworkers find some stuff they like and I find a good tenant.