Seven Lists for Moving Day

1. Things we'll do tomorrow

First, I'll catch the cat and put him in his kitty jail.

The movers come at 10. They'll load all the boxes in the hallway first, and then whatever else they can fit in the truck for the first load. While they're loading, I'll pack whatever I can from the master bedroom and empty the last of the big bookcases, just pulling bins and stacking them in empty spaces if I must.

Once they have a truckload of stuff, they'll head for the new house. I'll stay here and keep packing, and the Renaissance Woman and Mermaid Girl will drive over to the new house in the van, taking a cell phone with them. They'll put the cat and the litter box and some food in the new bathroom and close the door. RW will supervise the unloading, but first she'll ask the movers to move the single bed--that the old owners left--out of the small bedroom and into the living room, on the far wall. MG will sit there and watch a DVD on the computer while the movers unload. Then they'll come back to the old apartment and get more stuff. And so on until everything that can be moved has been moved.

If there's stuff we can't move because we're out of boxes or out of time, we'll leave it here at the old place for now and come back for it when we have more time and/or when we've unpacked a bit and can re-use the empty boxes. First priority tomorrow will be, in order of importance (though not necessarily chronology):

couch
beds, especially MG's super-heavy complicated bed
Big bookcases and shelving units
Books
Other heavy boxes
Fragile dishware
Portable dishwasher
Tables and chairs, especially the dining table
Small shelving units
Light boxes of miscellaneous

We've already moved the art, the musical instruments, and a couple of beanbag chairs.

2. Things we'll still have to do after tomorrow:

Get whatever's left from the house
Repaint MG's room from its current purple-pink-orange striped color scheme to some color more desirable to the general non-7-year-old-girl population
Patch up all the holes in the walls
Clean the old apartment
Re-hang the curtains in the old apartment, which we moved around and in some cases replaced with our own curtains
Reinstate the locking doorknob in the door to MG's old room, from whence we removed it last year so she couldn't lock us out whenever she had a tantrum
Tell the Post office and Revenue Canada and probably the Immigration folks that we've moved
Unpack the new apartment
Re-assemble MG's bed
Assemble the porch swing I bought last month, which was a floor model and came without instructions
Find tenants for the downstairs place

3. Nice things that the old owners left us:

That single bed (though I'm not sure where we'll put it in the long term if the downstairs tenants don't want it)
Another dining table (ditto)
A kitchen clock
A box of Borax
Curtains to all the rooms
Mirror with big ornate gilded frame, to be hung in MG's room
A couple of sweet painted rocks on the kitchen windowsill

5. Things I'm afraid of:

The house will be too hot
The soundproofing--between upstairs & downstairs, and between our room and MG's--will be too feeble
The tenants will be difficult in some unforeseen way
The yard will be too overwhelming
The neighbors will be too rowdy
Something nice will break in the move
The porch swing will fall apart, or will be impossible to put together in the first place
The cat will escape and never be seen again
We will never unpack and will live among stacks of boxes for the rest of our lives, falling deeper and deeper into chaos

6. Things I wish I had more of:

Small/medium-sized boxes
Time

7. Things I wish I had less of:

Everything else