Moving is Expensive!

We have now emerged from the hellish phase of moving and are settling into our new home. Our condo sale closed on Tuesday, all the money went where it was supposed to go, and our first new mortgage payment is due on Monday.

I have found it quite amazing/shocking how many expenses there have been over the last few weeks for both ends of the transaction. I’m not talking about the obvious (buying the house and paying sales commissions). It’s the other stuff. For example (numbers are approximate):

• Paying movers to pack and move us ($3300)
• Paying a landscaper and contractor to do pre-move repairs and improvements on the older home we bought ($17000)
• a doorbell (the house didn’t have one), new front door lock, lots of new keys, garage door opener (call all that about $2000, with installation costs)
• Paying vendors to do minor spruce-ups and cleaning on the condo we sold ($2000)
• Buying a new laundry appliance (we bought an all-in-one washer/dryer for the garage) (about $2000 all-in) and a cheap microwave ($100)—there wasn’t one, and we need it until the kitchen is remodeled
• Paying for various utility transfers and installations (Internet, city services, etc.)—call that $500
• And about a cajillion small purchases from Amazon, the hardware store and Target (think extension cords, three-prong adapters, oven thermometer because the current oven is ancient, you get the idea)
• And the fun stuff: a gas grill (we obviously didn’t have one in the condo), a garage freezer (got a good deal on a Memorial Day weekend sale), and my husband’s bigger, smarter TV. (I told him I feel like I live in a sports bar now, and he said, “Is that a bad thing?” 😂)

With the exception of the last bullet, all of the above was necessary, the cost of doing business. I have some regrets about paying the movers to pack us because they didn’t do a very good job. If I wanted large, heavy boxes filled with randomly selected items thrown in there and either vaguely or wrongly labeled, I could have done that myself. I didn’t find my smart toaster until the second-to-last kitchen box and was getting downright cranky about it.

I’ll admit that a few days after the move, as we were buried in boxes and paper, didn’t know where anything was or how things worked, I had some panicked moments of feeling like we’d made an awful mistake and thinking “we still own the condo; let’s pull out of our sales contract, move back, and put the house back on the market”—but then I told myself to stop being such a baby. But we unpacked the last boxes on Memorial Day and had our artwork hung on Tuesday, and now the place is feeling (more) like home.

It’s the cost of doing business, but we’ll be OK.