A Brilliant New Packing Strategy with Annoyed Army Wife

{Hey all! I am currently driving to Texas, with my car stuffed to the windows, blasting old Backstreet Boys while my sister and I sing along. I'm going to be out for a couple of days to account for travel, recovery and unpacking time. Oh, and to shower my husband with kisses and other signs of affection. In the meantime, you are lucky to have a couple of my favorite bloggers making guest appearances in my absence.}

Of course we are going to kick this off with one of my favorite bloggers: Annoyed Army Wife.

She is honest, funny and one of the coolest people I've never met! And in true Army-wife fashion she has moved as many times as the rest of us. Today, she is going to share her new techniques for packing and moving.

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When Mel asked me to write a guest post for her as she prepares to move down to Texas for the summer I was ‘Of course I’ll do it!’ First, here’s an intro for those of you who do not know me; I’m the annoyed army wife married to OccDoc, an Army doctor recently returned from a deployment in Afghanistan. As I like to say ‘I support the troops, just not always the one I’m married to.’ Now, on to my topic: PCSing/Moving Techniques.

OccDoc got back from Afghanistan at the end of February and when we went to pay our rent at the end of March we got this news: We’re selling your house, but you can stay as long as it takes to sell. Have you ever sold a house? Have you ever rented a house currently on the market? Well, if not both situations suck and the kicker if your renting is that it’s not even your freaking house and your life is completely affected. OccDoc and I offered to increase our rent and do some (costly) home improvement projects if the landlord would let us sign a new year lease, then put the house on the market after that lease was up. He turned down our offer. So, after having to move every year or two because the army makes us, we now find ourselves moving after two years for other reasons. I guess we were being unreasonable thinking we could live in the same house for three years. We should have known better.

We found a house to rent that is closer to the army post OccDoc works at (there is no on post housing there) and signed a lease to begin on May 1. Our move out date on our current house is May 31, one month after our lease ended. We could have stayed put until they sold our house, but we’re still a bit upset our landlord turned down our offer and that he waited to the last possible second to tell us he wasn’t renewing our lease. So, if the house takes forever to sell, which we’re pretty sure it will in our neighborhood with the ridiculous asking price they have on it, then our landlord is screwing himself out of a lot of income. Too bad, so sad for him.

Since we essentially have a whole month to move I will be debuting a new revolutionary moving technique. Okay, so many not quite, but we’re so used to packin’ up and movin’ out in a day or two that I feel like this technique is new and revolutionary for us. In the time OccDoc and I have been together (7 years) we have moved going on 6 times. So, it’s not like I’m a PCSing/Moving virgin; I’ve been around the block and around and around. You know how it takes forever to unpack? Maybe not, but for us it does. Like there were some boxes in our current house I just unpacked 4 months ago (if I would have known we were moving again I won’t have bothered). I suck at unpacking. Suck. Here’s my new technique: one room at a time moving, then the big stuff at the end. Let me break it down for you.

We’re moving one room at a time, so everything I can fit into my car from a particular room will be moved and unpacked immediately in the new house. Theoretically, we should have one empty room in the old house and one totally set up room in the new house. My first room is the office. I’m going to put everything from the office, except the giant bookcase, into my car then drive it 40 miles to our new house and unpack it AND set it up. After I’m done with all the trips needed to empty that room I’m going to clean the room in the old house and shut the door. We have a guest bedroom and our master bedroom, so we plan on moving our bed (it’s a Sleep Number that comes apart semi-easily) towards the beginning so we can make the new house ‘homebase’ and move all of our crazy animals there. That will make getting ready for showings at the old house way easier since I won’t have to sit in my car with two Chihuahuas and two rabbits. And we’ll just leave our guest room intact until the end in case we have to sleep over at the old house. Then towards the end of the move we’ll rent a moving truck to move our couches, washer, dryer, and other stuff I can’t fit into my Subie. A lot of stuff fits in the Subie – we put a picnic table in there one time.

I know my new and revolutionary moving technique probably sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, but I’m pretty confident it will work out. And by spreading our move out we’ll need less help since I’ll be able to do most everything myself. I think we will be able to bribe our neighbors into helping us on our ‘big stuff’ move day. What do you think? Disaster waiting to happen or brilliant idea?