- Emily Ellet
Moving Pains
How miserable it is to pack dishes
How many dishes there seem to be, even after giving a bunch away
How I am too efficient of an organizational guru, which meant I kept stumbling upon hidden caches of storage I hadn’t known I’d made – and then having to pack it all
How much effort changing your address is
How you will always forget at least one critically important vendor/business/person to tell your new address to and have to try to track down your package/card/paycheck
How you should never try to work in the week before or the week after moving (you will probably make a major mistake that you’ll have to try to explain to your boss with, “I would never have done this if I hadn’t been moving…”)
How it always takes four times longer to physically move (even with movers) than you thought it would
How you will stop caring how much you spend on moving supplies and screws and wall anchors and groceries because you just want to be done moving in
But the biggest thing I’d forgotten was how long it can take to bond with your new home. People kept asking me, “Are you just thrilled to be living in Manhattan now?” and I kept trying to explain, “Maybe someday I will be? But not yet.”
My furniture layouts worked perfectly, everything we owned pretty much fit, and all the boxes were gone. But I had yet to feel like our apartment was home. I felt so alone, even though we were now technically closer to our friends and work. I couldn’t remember why I had been so excited about living in this new apartment. And there was a pretty aggressive depression that I couldn’t shake off.
Ultimately, two things helped:
giving into my desire to have ice cream every night for about two weeks (Ben & Jerry’s, how I love thee); and
cooking a fancy meal for us in our new kitchen.
Something about picking out a menu, ordering the groceries, and then physically making the meal FINALLY connected me to my kitchen, and thus to my apartment. I don’t know why this is so, as I’m not a particularly great cook. I don’t even cook that much! But it was cooking that started to make this apartment feel like a home.
Simple things followed. I began to see my neighborhood for real and to start thinking, “This is home!” I began to explore the stores around us. And I began to be artistically creative once more – scrapbooking and singing and (finally now) blogging.
Maybe it’s because in the past, I’ve really only moved across large distances, to totally new communities. In contrast, this move just hopped a river – and we still work and walk in all the same streets we did before we moved. So it felt like a huge event with no real change.
But, oh how much changed. I feel a lot savvier for the next time we move. Oh, actually, that’s another thing – it was the first time my husband and I moved together! Combining our two spheres of stuff into our first apartment five and a half years ago wasn’t really a move – it was just starting from scratch. So I guess this was really a brand new experience, though I thought that I was a moving pro from all the years of moving growing up.
Has anyone else had strange reactions to moving? Or is it just me? Also, how do I now wean myself from daily ice cream without going into withdrawal??
photo credit: moving house via photopin (license)
#depression #neighborhood #packing #moving #home #cooking #icecream #Artist #Manhattan