I've been packing my house for nearly 12 hours now. This fucking sucks. I knew this was going to be shitty but I had no idea. It's disgusting how much junk two people can accumulate in a small basement.

Basically I handed in my thesis today and figured I had another 48 hours to pack up the house before the movers came on Friday. The company called today and said they would "greatly appreciate it" if I could be ready by noon Thursday, giving me a little over 24 hours until they arrive. I suppose I could have said "no way", but I'm an idiot and like a challenge sometimes, so it's been balls out since then. So once they leave with my stuff, I'm left with my laptop, some dvds and cds and internet access until Friday when I adjourn to a hotel room until Tuesday, the day I head out.

Any moving day horror stories out there?

I once rented a house with about 10 other guys. The most that lived there at one time was about 4. The only person who stayed as a constant in the house was yours truly. When moving day came, all but one of them screwed me and didn't show up. There was a one thousand dollar deposit, some of which was mine. We cleaned that damn thing untill about four in the morning and still only got 150 dollars back.

Dude, hehe, I have moved 24 times in 27 years. But, I would have to say the worst one was my second to last move in college. Moved into a house with some friends, which they had already lived in for a year. We were supposed to be out August 1st, and one roommate left July 1, the other July 17th...taking their belongings, but none of the "common" furniture, i.e. couces, chairs, dishes, keg holder thingy, and various SHIT. And, since I was last one out, all cleaning of property fell to me.

My best friend and I moved it all out, illegally dumping A LOT of the stuff we didn't want, vaccuumed, said fuck everything else and turned in the keys. Of an original $1200 security deposit, we got back like $300. We basically used it on "party materials." The dudes who left early had the temerity to ask about their share of the deposit.

I'm with ya... I have to move tomorrow. Non-stop packing/cleaning for the past 3 days now.

I've called it quits tonight. I'm dead on my feet. I've still got a couple of hours tomorrow. I'm going to spend my last hours of televsion watching Ethan and Winona. I'm officially delerious.

i hate moving - that's why the last 2 times we moved we have paid someone to do most of it for us.

I forgot to include this same thing in my story.

my junior year of college, i lived with three other girls in the biggest shithole you could possibly imagine. mice, bugs, the heat didn't work until the middle of december (this is in wisconsin, mind you) and when it finally kicked in, the apartment flooded and we essentially lived in a sauna.

repeated calls to the landlord yielded no results. two of my roommates were studying abroad the next semester, so at the end of december we decided to just skip out on the lease and take off. the day we planned to make our great escape, everything went wrong. we found out the night before that our landlord was showing the apartment (for the next year) at noon, but we all decided to go out and get drunk anyways. we all overslept and spent two hours freaking out- throwing discarded pieces of furniture into the front yard, yelling at each other, etc. my roommate got in an accident bringing the uhaul over. the whole time i just imagined my landlord strolling up to the apartment and seeing us- hungover, frantic, guilty as hell. somehow we got away with it, but i don't think i could ever have a worse moving experience.

when i moved to CO for school i was so poor i couldn't afford a uhaul. i just threw all the essentials into my car and left. for two days i couldn't see out of any of my mirrors and the space left for me was smaller than a cockpit. i think i went crazy a couple times on the way.

my buddy, who has a big ass truck and who is notoriously generous and helpfu, volounteered to help another buddy "move" and he shows up thinking he is just hauling stuff, and they hadn't packed one friggin' box. man was he pissed off.

I've been packing and moving stuff to storage for 2 weeks now. I think I am done for the time being, until the weekend when I need to move the stuff I need to Cincinnati. Then I get to come back at the end of May to move the wife and kid to Cincy.

I hear Phil A. is grumpy from all his moving, haha.

You bet your sweet bippy that moving makes me grumpy. I don't have a problem moving other people, you own a truck, you move people. But the sheer amount of tension moving your own shit brings... it's wild.

And this move is super easy, i've done way worse moves. And I've been smart about it, taking a small load in the morning on my way to subbing, one load of furniture at night... I've got everything moved except my bed, my computer, my clothes (which are washed, folded, etc.) and a few various odds and ends.

And I'll miss this place. Alot of good times here with Haq and Katie, my other roommates, friends, being able to walk to the Shamrock, or get a slice of Chicago's till 5 a.m.

But I really like my new place and my new roommate has been a great friend over the past year. And we're going to make a kick ass album of insanely fantastic music, the likes of which this city has never been home to. And we have a huge yard. Suburban big. With grass, and plants and flowers. And everyone in the building is either an artist or a musician, and they're all very nice.

But holy jeebus, moving is a BITCH.

Moved from central London to Reading three weeks ago. If my buddy Sam wasn't a professional mover in a former life, I would have been so screwed. Packing and unpacking still sucked, but thankfully the new place comes with a garage I can use for storage.

Still stressed me the fuck out.

I've heard from several female friends that their underwear has 'vanished' after removal men have helped them move house.

I hope these were just isolated cases because the idea that there is some sort of world-wide lingerie cult amongst removal men is something that frightens me a little. I imagine something like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom only in the back of a Pickfords van.