All that hyperbolic nineteenth-century rhetoric about Americans
being pioneers with frontier spirit is just high-gloss spin on
the fact that Yankees are a population of refugees. Pretty much
everyone who lives here now either moved a long way to get here
or descended from someone who did. We'd exempt Native Americans
from that group, but they've probably been forced to move the
most. Since we've all got it in our blood, let's translate that
'spirit' into an efficient mastery of the otherwise unbearable
process of moving.
Moving
is a stress-filled pain in the ass, make no mistake. Not only
do you have to handle myriad details of organization, but you
have to do it while enjoying the murky fear of moving to a place
that you probably don't know too much about; oh, and add in all
the depressing kicks of saying goodbye to hordes of old friends.
Cheery. We offer this SYW on "how to move to a new city"
as a semi-soviet solution to the problem: emotionless but effective.
Oh,
and we've found that if you don't follow this guide, the moving
trauma is liable to explode in an overloaded station wagon at
some Godforsaken rest stop.
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There
are tons of online resources engineered to help with relocation. In
fact, there may be too many; if left to hunt amongst them yourself,
you may just get annoyed and overwhelmed like we did (until we remembered
that it's our job to feel that way, so that others need not). The
primary theme running through almost all moving guides, though, is
a smart one: create a timeline. You want to assemble a list of the
legion of items you need to take care of, so that you can stop forgetting
to do things -- or worse, stop worrying about forgetting to do things.
With this list in hand, you can move ruthlessly down it, handling
tasks, checking items off, squelching free speech -- sorry, that may
be a little too soviet again.
The
obvious question though is, "What should that list contain
and in what order?" Hakuna Matata, no worries: we've designed
a prototypical checklist for you. Now, if you have particular needs,
like "Where do I kennel my ferret?" and "How do I
find an apartment in Azerbaijan?" you will obviously need to
customize your moving protocol.
Most
of the tasks that confront you in a move will break down into two
classes: (a) setting up life in a new place and (b) breaking down
life in the old one. There are a few issues that straddle the two
and some that fall outside of them, but we'll try to cover them
all.
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