The Move

Well, Adrian and I (and Bean and Armi and Pico and Nano) have officially moved. We have registered our change of address with everyone we can think of who needs to know. We have a lounge full of boxes. And a dining room full of boxes. And two spare rooms full of boxes. And... well, you get the point.

Last Saturday we hired a 16 cubic metre moving truck with a hydraulic tail-lift that Adrian drove. He drove it quite well, and alluded to actually enjoying it. However, when I mentioned a potential change in career, it appeared that was going too far.

We had lots and lots of amazing help from our neighbours Sean and Olivier and from Adrian's dad too. The boys loaded all the big stuff into the truck and Paul and I made full car trips with boxes to the new house. After one load with the moving truck full, we had delivered all of the biggest things to the new house. The weather was cold and pretty windy (southerlies are never friendly) but the rain held off JUST long enough for us to move all the big stuff inside. It was a mission trying to get things such as mattresses and bedheads into the house as the new house bears the brunt of the southerly pretty bad. I was trying to decide which was best: bedhead as a sail, or bedhead as a rudder.

As we were unloading the last of the big things from the moving truck, it clouded over and all started to look a bit ominous. However, thanks to our 8am pick-up of the moving truck, the worst of the moving was done. Well, the most awkward things to carry anyway. And the most dangerous things to land on top of you should you happen to slip in the mud.

We said goodbye and thanks very much to Paul, Sean and Olivier. Whenceforth we started moving all of the rest of our things, in carloads of boxes.

It turned out that a week of our leases overlapped, meaning although we moved into our new house last weekend, we had also paid rent until the next weekend on our old house. Which was kind of good and kind of bad. It meant we didn't have to stress about moving EVERYTHING and cleaning EVERYTHING before the end of Sunday, but it also meant that the moving process has been drawn out over an entire week. So Adrian and I have diligently been making trips back and forth to the other house each night after work, slowly picking up all the things we left, and slowly cleaning room by room. Adrian is there today, bless him, all alone, doing the final tidy-up before the inspection with the landlord tonight.

So the last couple of weeks have been ridiculously busy, packing, unpacking, tidying, throwing away, maintaining our sanity.

So far we have decided that the new house is possibly warmer than the other one. It is not as sheltered as the other, which means more ventilation and more sun (when it decides to come out). It has a flued gas heater in the lounge which is pretty good for warming the lounge directly, and we've bought a convection heater for our bedroom which has a timer so we wake up toasty in the morning.

We are happily using our ensuite... although it fogs up pretty badly so have to leave the windows open most of the time. BUT, at least it HAS windows. And a door, which we can close so that the coolth [yes, it is a word] coming in through the windows stays mostly out of the bedroom. It's handy having a toilet less than two metres from your bed. That actually sounds quite gross. I assure you it is entirely sanitary. Adrian and I even swapped sides of the bed (shock horror! No, actually, this was a big decision) so that I would be on the toilet side.

So, once our hands are free of the Korokoro house, I will be quite relieved. Then we can start unpacking things with unreserved enthusiasm (!) and make our new home more liveable.