I've had several moves in my life, none traumatic I'm happy to say. The military moved me nine times. Each seemed to be a full day's evolution. In all those moves I can recall only a few items not making it to the new destination, none of them irreplaceable or particularly significant to me (but I can imagine the lure of them for sticky fingers). The last one was the most exhausting. That was in 1995 when I moved out of a third floor walk-up (and walk-down) condo into a fourth floor condo with elevator.
I busted my hump for about a week moving odds and ends I thought "I" should move rather than the mover I hired. The mover had a crew of two and they were superb. I was into my condo (with excess delivered to my storage unit) in about four hours. I spent Thanksgiving week 1995 making trips back and forth to the old condo picking up things left behind and cleaning. It was tiring....especially making six or seven trips up and down those stairs loaded with stuff.
As a kid, my parents moved us from Johnston SC to Greenville SC when I was seven. In Greenville, we moved three times while I was a kid. None was particularly traumatic, but I was in a "different" school district on the second move and didn't much like the school I had to attend for 6th and 7th grades. Happily, we moved in the middle of my 7th-grade year and I found myself in Junior High School along with kids I knew in elementary school. So, it was more the impact on my life, rather than the move, that I remember about those moves.
The move I am not looking forward to is my next one. It will take me across country and I'm really not certain how I'm going to manage it. I have "collections" that must be considered -- books, records, CDs and DVDs, film memorabilia -- many of you know whereof I speak. Do I pre-pack them, oversee the re-packaging and trust them to fate? Or do I rent a truck for my most cherished possessions and drive them cross-country?
Sigh.