Moving Woes

Moving sucks. In the last two years, my wife, Amy and I have relocated from Rochester, NY…to Dallas, TX…back to Rochester again. And let me tell you—if you think packing your shit and moving to another place in the same town/city is a hassle, try packing up and hauling ass 1600 miles and back. Not fun at all. When we left NY for TX, we moved ourselves. Had friends help us load our stuff into a U-Haul and we towed Amy’s truck behind us, then drove 30 hours straight through to Texas. At one point during our nonstop marathon drive to the Dallas area, Amy told me that we were never moving ourselves again like that. So when the time came to relocate back to New York, we decided to hire movers, and paid a company to transport one of our trucks for us.

I know, I know….I’m rambling and you’re probably wondering where I’m going with all of this. Well, after 3 months of living with friends of ours, Amy and I moved into a new place last week. We had movers transport our belongings from storage, into the new pad. With the actual loading & unloading of boxes, furniture, etc, usually being the biggest hassle during a move, we figured we’d be on easy street this time, since we weren’t responsible for that.

I was wrong. The move into our new place has been one of the biggest moving hassles I’ve dealt with.

This is no fault of the movers, as they were very cordial and did a great job getting all of our stuff in the place. Unfortunately, our new landlord did not ensure that the previous tenants cleaned the place to (what I would consider to be) acceptable conditions. Nor did she make sure the maintenance folks cleaned up after themselves after working on the place before we moved in. Apparently the previous tenants weren’t the cleanest folks, and the condition of the place is a testament to that.

Carpets were dirty….bathrooms grungy…kitchen stove a mess…walls and baseboards dirty…new coats of paint definitely needed in some rooms…floors dirty…back patio unkept…not to mention the tools & supplies (paint, plaster, random hardware) that the maintenance guy didn’t take with him…

Oh, but the fun doesn’t end there!!

Lights & outlets don’t work in our spare bedroom. The heat from the furnace isn’t pumping into our living room (which is on the 3rd floor or our place), and our dishwasher is in need of minor repairs. Then there’s the few spots where door handles have knocked into walls behind them, leaving dings and small holes in them.

Now, before Amy and I can even entertain the idea of fully unpacking & setting up our new abode, we have to take care of most of the mess, which has been a huge undertaking over the last 5 days. Amy spent 6 hours cleaning the upstairs bathroom over the weekend. Counters & tiles we thought were supposed to be beige came to be sparkling white when she was done. Some walls are looking better after I’ve scrubbed them down & cleaned spots, smoke residue and other random filth off of them.
We’re almost a week into living here, and have only unpacked 20% of our stuff. Here we were, thinking the move-in process would be cake, since we had them good ‘ole movers unloading our things. After all, all I needed to do was point to where they should put things. Little did we know that our first week would be spent cleaning things that should have been clean before we moved in.

The landlord’s temporary resolution for the problem with the heat in the living room? To give us 2 electric space heaters. WTF?? So we’re supposed to run these things and cover the outrageous electric bill we’ll get, considering it’s fucking December in Rochester and cold as hell outside? We’re not happy campers right now. The landlord seems to think that a cleaning of the ducts will resolve the issue, which I already know it won’t. There’s obviously a duct that closed somewhere, and I can’t seem to find it. So instead of having some urgency on her part, the landlord instead decides to call around for duct cleaning services, all of which are booked through the end of the month. I doubt she’ll be happy when she finds out I called the Department of Health to complain.

We should be enjoying our new place right now, not dreading the continued cleaning and work that needs to be done before we can start setting the place up. Maybe this whole hassle will make the impending enjoyment of the new pad that much sweeter when we are finally finished cleaning someone else’s mess.

Rant over. I've got more scrubbing that needs tending to...