Move Magic

For the third time since we moved over here (possibly the forth), we have had a set of neighbors just up and move out without warning. Seriously. One day they're there and everything looks normal.  The next day, the house is abandoned with tires in the yard. As with the other neighbors who left, this was right at the end of the month, so the assumption is that they were skipping out before paying rent.

I am not going to fault or judge any of these people for their decisions to leave so quickly. Things happen. In the lives of poor people, just one or two bits of misfortune (car breaks down, someone gets sick) and you could lose everything. Living paycheck to paycheck means exactly that. When you don't have one, very quickly, you don't have rent money either.

What I want to discuss is just how baffled I am by how they accomplish this. How do you PACK UP YOUR HOUSE that quickly? Seriously? Moving is like the most gut wrenching and soul sucking experience ever. It takes weeks just to remove all the crap from one room and that is with consistent work. Then you have to move it onto something and take it away. No one can do this quickly!

Not only were there adults in these situations, all of these households had children as well. Packing for a kid is about like trying to make a cat pack. The kid keeps dragging everything you just packed out of the box. They whine and scream and need to be fed. When you're trying to load stuff onto the truck, they whine and scream as well. It's a mess.

And yet, all around me, people are able to accomplish this move-voodoo with ease. What have they learned that I did not? Do they just leave most of their stuff? Do they just keep most of it at the ready to go? Do they never unpack in the first place? I just don't understand. I seriously want to though, especially before I move again.