What I learned by moving

"Moving Tip #48:  Packing tape should not be used for painful practical jokes."

We recently moved to a new home.  It had been twelve years since I had moved and all it did was rekindle all the reasons I hate moving.  I think most people hate moving.  Even when you have someone else doing the packing and hauling it's a royal pain in the butt.  We didn't.  We packed and moved ourselves with some help from friends and family.

The upside is once it's over, and if you've done it halfway properly, you've eliminated a lot of worthless stuff and cleaned and organized everything.

As I said it's a new home but it's not a new house.  Actually it's an old house (by American standards anyway).  It's been mostly remodeled and we really, really like it.  But it's not a new house.

So as we're settling in I start systematically running across things that don't work or don't fit.

The first problem was my office desk.  Under no circumstances would it fit in the room that I REALLY wanted as my office.  The room I wanted has a big window, faces East for morning sun and is large enough for all my stuff.  Remember the getting rid of stuff line?  I'm down to three printers instead of four and one flat screen instead of two.  The other option is a much smaller, much darker room.  So, my desk doesn't come apart and won't fit, therefore the options are settle for the less desirable room or spend money to get a new desk.  Or...cut off two of the legs then reattach them after moving it in.  I was pretty nervous since I knew if I screwed it up I'd ruin a great piece of furniture.  But I took my time, remembered the adage to "measure twice and cut once" and it worked perfectly.  I'm sitting at it as I write this post.

The next thing to come up was the electricity in the garage went out.  Totally out.  No where else, just the garage.  So, being an older house it has a couple of fuse boxes.  A newer one with breaker fuses and an old one with screw-in fuses.  Nothing is labeled so it's hunt an peck time.  The breakers are easy since you can pretty easily tell if it's flipped or not.  The old one, not so much.  So my options are go buy some new fuses and one-by-one switch them out and see if it works, or spend the money to call an electrician.  Or....look around the garage.  There's a switch for the overhead lights and one for the outside lights, and one that doesn't appear to be for anything.  So I flip it and all the electricity comes back on.  Don't know why it's there or why it doesn't have a "Don't Touch This" label but there it is.

So, relearning some lessons.

• Don't miss an opportunity to clear out unused or unwanted things and clean and organize as you're doing it.
• Don't just settle instead of taking the time to get it the way you want it.
• Try the simple things first.

Really good lessons for the workplace as well, don't you think?