We did it. We got everything packed into our moving cubes. Because we aren't going straight to our destination (and also because we have no idea where we're living yet) we can't do regular moving things like just packing up a truck and meeting it there. So we got moving cubes (kind of like PODS....but smaller since the PODS are HUGE and also very expensive....like $5,000 or something way beyond our budget).
The company dropped off the cubes last week and was coming to get them on Monday. They don't tell us exactly when they are coming so we have to have it all packed and ready by 6am since we get fined if they come to get our cubes and they aren't ready. Friday we had a lot packed but had to go to Connecticut to say goodbye to some dear friends, mentors and Husband's adopted family for the time he was an intern there. We got home at about 7:00 and had to finish getting everything packed and loaded into the cubes.
Midnight came....we were making pretty good progress.
2am came...things were slowing down but still looked do-able. Husband was EXHAUSTED (understandably so....my job was to load the boxes. He was carrying them out to the cubes by himself and fussing with them to make them fit)so he had to take a 2 hour nap to keep going while I finished loading all the boxes.
At 4 am when I woke him up, we had a lot more packed but still not everything.
6 am : We're 98% of the way there but haven't packed up our artwork or pictures off our walls. We figured we'd just keep loading stuff and if we see the truck coming, throw the lock on it and call it good and mail the rest of our stuff if necessary.
7:30 am: We are done (finally!). I haven't slept in 26 hours or so. I go to bed while Husband packs empty space full of cardboard to keep items from shifting during shipping.
At about 2:00 I am woken up by a very apologetic husband saying that there is something wrong with one of the cubes and we might have to unload it into another one (WHAT?!?) so to please get dressed and come outside. I throw on some clothes and wander outside a bit disheveled...
Now, in order for you to understand the next part you need some back information. We got two of these cubes. They are about the size of small walk-in closets. We had loaded one with our furniture and some boxes (so as to not crush the furniture). We loaded the other one half-full with our library and the filled in the rest with more boxes. The other thing you need to know is that the way this cube business works is that they come with a large flatbed truck and a fork lift. They use the fork lift to pick up the cubes and load them onto the flatbed truck before tying them down.
Alright. Back to the story...
So I get outside. One of the cubes is gone (loaded on the truck). Husband explains that our second cube (the one with the books) is too heavy. Apparently there is a 2,000 pound weight limit and the forklift is rated for 5,000 pounds. When the fork lift tries to lift our cube, the back wheels come off the ground because it is too heavy. They estimated that our cube weighed 7,000 pounds. Seven thousand pounds?!!? Of books! The truck driver has been doing this everyday for 5 years and said only one other time was a cube too heavy to lift and that time the other person was a machinist and had loaded all of his tools and some machinery into it.
This reminds me of Jeff Foxworthy "You might be a redneck if...." jokes. Except that ours would go something like, "You know you have too many books when..." I guess that's what happens when most of your bookshelves look kind of like this:
Where the books are double-stacked and the shelves are bending. Yeah....Luckily in the end we didn't have to load everything into another cube. The driver ended up putting the stabilizers down which anchored the lift in place, lifted the cube as high as it could go and ended up backing the semi truck underneath it and lowering it on to the platform. Oh. My. Goodness. I am so glad...so so so so glad that we didn't have to unload and reload the crazy cubes.
Alrighty. I've got to get back to packing up the stuff that's coming in our car with us. Just remember the moral of the story....don't put all your books in one moving cube.
