A letter from my future self regarding the move

Hey, it’s me (you), writing from the future! It’s about a month after the move to the new house, and I thought I should check in.

I realize when this reaches you you’ll be quite busy getting your tenant rights trampled on by the downtrodden landlord in the Lexus SUV, but I thought it important for you to know we survived all that and the move was generally a success. And while I don’t expect you to make different choices because of this letter, in the off chance life isn’t entirely predetermined here’s a few things we learned during the move that might prove helpful, or at least, insightful.

The good news is you find a 4 bedroom house that is a good fit for the family. School, commute, size, neighbourhood, all good. The bad news is you’ll have a short time frame to do so, in a rental market that seems to derive great pleasure from providing you a near complete lack of options.

Expect a rent increase of approximately $800. I’m not going to lie, we’re still not sure where that money is going to come from. Do people still sell kidneys?

Many realtors will offer to help you find a new place, because apparently they’re all gatekeeping rentals now. That said, no realtor will actually help you. One will suggest you can’t afford anything, offer no further suggestions, and then just kind of disappear.

Everyone agrees using towels as a packing material is a great idea, so you can stop selling the family on it now.

There are so many boxes. They are expensive, and you’ll need all of them.

On moving day, no matter how organized you are, it will go sideways. There will be fewer movers than you requested. There will be 1 less truck. It will take longer than anticipated. You will be up very late. For once you had an accurate bead on how much something would cost, and that was somehow worse than completely underestimating it.

On the morning of the move you’ll find yourself wondering if the keys to the new house might be completely imaginary. Like the yeti, you’ve never seen them, and are open to the idea that they exist, but only people on the internet claim to have seen them.

The cat won’t be as stressed by the move as you thought she would be. You don’t need to plan the entire moving day morning around her. You won’t have the keys until after lunch anyway.

Moving a 4 bedroom house across town is painful. Moving across the world might be easier. Setting fire to all your stuff and just walking away would be easiest.

So. Many. Boxes.

The new house will not be what you remember, even though you visited it twice. There will be more wear in high traffic areas. It will require a bit more cleaning. There will be windows where you don’t remember there being windows, which is fine because there should really be a window there. The stress may have affected your eyesight.

Your curtains will all be too long.

Your furniture, carefully chosen for your last home, will not be such a natural fit for your new home. You’ll discover you somehow have more space than before. An entire room will go unfurnished probably forever. Regardless, even though the basement door looks like a normal height, it’s not, and your old couch has to stay on the main floor.

Some utility companies will have a different definition of what moving means than you do. Even though you completed their moving forms online, call them as soon as possible after the move to make sure you filled out the forms completely wrong so they can charge you for two properties instead of one. The gas company will blame you for not understanding their complex system, repeatedly, and will not reimburse you the money you lost. Because it was your fault, as they said. Repeatedly.

In hind sight the gas company might be run by bots.

The new family mantra is “Oh, I’ve seen that somewhere…” followed by a neutral gaze at a sea of boxes. We’re getting a crest made.

I have no idea where any of the towels are.

Even though you spent several weekends before the move decluttering and taking unwanted things to Value Village, you will discover you still have at least one more trip to make after the move. Probably two. Likely four.

Some boxes will never get unpacked. Some boxes didn’t get unpacked from the previous move (and the one before that), and they continue to be unpacked, and will, in all likelihood never be unpacked. The storage room is the unsung hero of every house, hiding your inability to make firm choices about what things you actually need in your life and what things you don’t. No one ever needs to know.

Check the fire alarms, they’re expired. One will go off at 3 AM two weeks after the move to alert you to this fact.

There will be odours in the basement. Don’t try to fix the problem by adding more odours. Maybe crack a window, and clean or something. Carpet cleaning will help, but not as much as you hoped.

The garage is full, and will be for the foreseeable future. In part from all of the empty boxes.

In time, you will be very happy in your new house. The stress and unfairness of the move will pass. There will be tears, and for a little while a kind of mourning for the old house. It will feel like an Airbnb for a couple weeks, but as the boxes and clutter slowly disappear, as old things find new places, the feeling of home will settle in.

After all, our favourite people are already here, and that’s half of it.

The other half might be finding the towels.