A Moving Experience by Guest Blogger Lena Gregory

Moving From New York to Florida

A Guest Post by Lena Gregory

In Scone Cold Killer, All-Day Breakfast Café #1, Gia moved from New York to a rural area of Florida. She sent all of her stuff down ahead, and her best friend, Savannah, moved everything into the house for her. Let me tell you, I was wishing Savannah was real and would do the same for me a few weeks ago! My husband and I moved from Long Island, New York to Clermont, Florida with our two sons, our daughter, our son-in-law, and all four of our dogs.

We spent the better part of a week packing two PODs to move. My husband was beyond frustrated trying to fit everything in, then he closed one of the doors for a couple of minutes and when he opened it again, a bunch of stuff came tumbling out. My eight-year-old son was building box forts in the POD then getting upset when anyone took a box (but he helped A LOT when he wasn’t building). My daughter and son-in-law were trying to help my husband so they didn't get anything of their own packed until the night before we left, and my other son and I were trying to pack the things that were left all over the house that I hadn't gotten to packing yet. We did all work together, but the end result was, we needed another POD. So I ordered a seven foot POD that came the next day.

I started out so organized, everything neatly wrapped, packed, and labeled. By eight o'clock Sunday night, I was opening drawers and closets and just dumping stuff into boxes and slapping some tape on them. Even though I’d spent months packing for the move, and pretty much had a maze throughout my entire house between all of the boxes and furniture, I hadn't even started packing the kitchen yet. I started packing kitchen stuff the night before the PODs were due to be picked up. After one box, I decided I didn't really need anything from my kitchen. 

Thankfully, I changed my mind about that by the time I got home from work the next day. But my house looked like a bomb hit it, the PODs still weren't fully packed, and I was too exhausted to even think about tackling it all. I grabbed a box and started dumping all of the utensil trays (knives and all) into the box. When my daughter came in and asked if I had a box ready, I looked down into the box I’d just “packed” and found knives and forks sticking up every which way like Pick-up Stix. 

My daughter took one look into the box, looked up at me and said, “Mom, why didn’t you just leave the stuff in the trays and put the trays in the box?”

Okay, so it made perfect sense after she pointed it out.

Once everything was packed into the PODs, (whatever would fit, anyway) we had to spend ten days in our basically empty house. At least, it seemed empty, until the night we had to pack the car to leave. Then, not so much. We had to drive with our eight-year-old and our twenty-year-old crammed into the back seat. They each had a small spot on the seat, but the floors in front of them were filled to the top with stuff, so they had to sit curled up on the seats all the way to Virginia.

We needed to get our car down to Florida with us, and the drive from Long Island to Florida is getting harder and harder for my husband and I to do (especially when my husband had already been awake for 37 hours and I’d been up for more than 20 hours by the time we left) so we drove from Long Island to Virginia, then got on the auto train, while my daughter and son-in-law each drove their cars with all of the dogs. I love the auto train. We can sit back, put our feet up, watch movies, sleep, go to the dining car to eat. So much better than sitting in traffic on I-95, pumping ourselves full of caffeine so we can stay awake to drive.

They load the cars onto the train, then hook them up to the passenger cars. The full train ends up being about 3/4 of a mile long. It leaves Lorton, VA at 4pm and reaches Sanford, FL at 9am the next morning. We used to take it when we vacationed in Florida, too, since I don't fly and I like to have my own car with me. I wish they had the auto train cross country! I'd love to travel across the US that way. By that time, the stress of packing and moving and driving was all behind me, so did I relax?

Nope. Of course not. I stressed over whether or not I would like the new house. We’d bought it without me ever having seen it. It seemed nice online, and it was a perfect set-up for us with a house for us and a second house for my daughter and her husband connected by a garage, so we bought it. My daughter and her husband had seen it before we bought it, and my husband and oldest son flew down a few months later and saw it, but my youngest son and I had never been there. 

Thankfully, we walked in and LOVED it, despite the snake living in the bushes right outside the dining room window (which those of you who have read the All-Day Breakfast Café series will understand my fear of since it matches Gia’s). Now we have boxes stacked all over the place, furniture in every room except where it actually belongs, and I have spent two weeks doing nothing but painting, staining, and laying floors. And I couldn’t be happier! 

Have you ever moved? Tell me about your experience. Were you completely organized and ready to go, or were you running around like a lunatic at the last minute trying to get everything together and done?