1584: Seriously, Hire Movers

I am writing this from my new bed in my new house. Downstairs is a partially unpacked living room, a not-at-all unpacked study and a mostly done kitchen. I am pleasantly, satisfyingly tired, and not feeling stressed out about the house or the things in it. Moving Day has, in short, been a Big Success.

And a significant part of this can be attributed to one thing: the fact we hired a removals company. Not a man with a van, not some friends who offered to help, a professional removals company.

They weren’t cheap, mind, though thankfully they weren’t one of the companies that wanted to charge us over a thousand pounds to move our stuff less than two miles down the road. (We get the impression that the companies who quoted us particularly stupid prices simply didn’t want to do the job — fair enough, since it involved lugging a shit-ton of stuff down from a second-floor flat, but it would have perhaps been nice if they’d just said that rather than arguably attempting to take advantage of us.)

But no, the company we used — Robinsons, if you’re curious — were great. They showed up promptly at the agreed time with a big truck that was more than capable of fitting all our stuff in — I’ve proven on more than one occasion that I have too much stuff for a Transit van by myself, let alone with Andie’s stuff in there too — and then proceeded to lug everything down the stairs for us while we alternated between twiddling our thumbs, making cups of tea for them and playing games on our phones, the only entertainment devices that were still within easy reach.

Then they drove the truck to our new place, unloaded everything and were gone before 4pm. If we’d been doing this ourselves, we’d still be shifting things well into the night, probably taking multiple trips and getting increasingly irritable.

But nope; the additional expense was well worth it for the peace of mind and lack of stress it brought. Tomorrow we can wake up refreshed and tackle the rooms that still need working on. We can buy and fit a dishwasher. And then we can flop down on the sofa — the sofa which wouldn’t fit up the stairs to our previous flat and which we consequently haven’t had the chance to sit on for a year and a half — to watch some television, safe in the knowledge that holy shit, this house actually belongs to us. Pretty neat, no?

Now it may be a ridiculously lame hour but I’m off to get some sleep. Photos will undoubtedly follow at some point in the near future once the place is a little more presentable!