I live in Portland now.

I moved starting Friday with loading, then Saturday was driving, and Sunday was unloading, though the process started ages ago with finding a place to live and packing my stuff.

This is my first real move, “real” meaning involving an entire apartment of stuff and furniture, a moving truck, a long drive, movers, etc. I’ve moved rooms before, but not a whole apartment, and not so far.

As a result, I made some mistakes in the process, which I want to detail here, not in the interest of berating myself or anyone else involved, but in the interest of not making the same mistakes twice.

Mistake #1: Failure to correctly estimate the volume of stuff I own.
I made a substantial underestimation in choosing which size truck to rent. I chose the smallest, 10′ U-Haul truck, when really, to accommodate everything in my apartment, I definitely needed the next larger one. I blame myself mainly, because I didn’t look carefully enough to realize that my tall bookcases would not stand upright in the smallest one (it is VERY close) and that it was just smaller than I envisioned, but it is also sort of U-Haul’s fault in that they claim that said truck can move apartments up to 1 BD, without stipulating that larger 1 BDs should use a larger truck.

The bookcases weren’t the only problem; it was also the sheer volume of stuff — in the kitchen, in the closets, all the stuff I forgot to really think about when I was thinking about stuff. And the sheer amount of furniture and similar items, even with my couch and media center gone — large coffee table, dining room table, computer desk and chair, IKEA Poang chair, dresser, queen bed, etc. It’s a lot. My old apartment was pretty large and had a lot of storage, and I had it very efficiently, if not excessively, filled.

I also forgot that I had to add my office stuff to the total because this was a voluntary move on my part and its shipping would not be paid for.

Mistake #2: Not packing enough in advance.
In general, I did a reasonable job with this. Where I messed up was in not packing the “last minute” stuff sooner, and not getting rid of even more random stuff (even though I had got rid of six bags of stuff plus freecycled a bunch of things). I had left a minimal set of things out to use, but it wasn’t minimal enough and I didn’t put it away and get down to total minimalism soon enough. I was able to cook up to the day before, which was definitely a mistake. I had too much food in the house, and too many things that I didn’t absolutely need (dish drainer, shower caddy, kitchen items, electronics) hadn’t been packed. This made for stressful packing at a very literal last hour, and complicated the “too much stuff for the truck” problem by making it unclear how much stuff there really was. And packing some stuff so early on and some stuff so late left me not making ideal decisions about what to take and what to leave. I definitely packed some stuff where if I could go back in time, I’d trade it for my toaster oven, or my Poang chair, though that’s not necessarily a possible trade even so.

I found the experience of packing myself to be a lot more challenging/boring/exasperating with the amount of stuff I own now than with the amount that I’ve owned in previous moves. I think next time if I have the budget I’ll give serious thought to hiring it out. On the other hand, my packing job rocked, because I am devoted to bubble wrap and packing paper and excellent at packing tetris. I haven’t found anything broken yet, and I’ve unpacked almost everything fragile.

Mistake #3: Overly optimistic/inopportune timing.

This manifested in several ways, but they all evolved out of not looking closely at what kind of time would be needed for parts of the process.

My plan evolved starting with learning my lease start date in Portland, which turned out to be Wednesday, June 24. From there, it took into account vacation time and timing, 30-day legal notice, other people’s schedules, and days of the week to decide when to move. The plan was to load Friday afternoon (after I worked Friday morning) and drive and unload on Saturday.

This turned out not to work the way I wanted. I should have taken more time off before the loading (that is, all of Friday at least, and maybe even shifted some of my vacation time to preceding the move rather than following, although I must say I am enjoying having time off to organize and do errands).

I should not have been trying to rent the truck and drive on a weekend, when everyone wants to move, because any equipment fail (see above) is irrevocable because all equipment is busy.

We should not have planned the more/most optimistic time estimates for the drive, because it took longer, and it was stressful to be worrying about time rather than enjoying the scenery.

Most surprising to me was a mistake I made about arrival time: we should not have planned to unload at 7pm on a Saturday in the middle of one of Portland’s active restaurant/retail districts. So obvious, yet it never occurred to me until my new landlord called and was like…um…this will probably not work, because parking in NW on Saturday nights is nonexistent.

Fortunately, the drive timing mistake and the retail issue canceled each other out and we ended up doing the unload on Sunday morning, and it worked out very well.

Aside from all that, the move really went very smoothly. The truck worked, the drive was safe, those who helped me out were all completely wonderful (friends, family, and movers), and I ended up with the old apartment empty and clean and owning a set of stuff that will fit pretty well in my new apartment. And I love my new apartment, and I love Portland, so I’m a happy camper.