Move Out

Wow! I hadn’t ever experienced this level of insanity before. I only have fuzzy memories of moving while in college or medical school Shana pretty much managed herself (and I still owe Ann & Ira a huge debt of gratitude). Carmen hosted Dani for the first portion of her time in Maryland. When Noah spent a semester at RIT it was Steve who pitched in. Mark & Debbie helped with Miriam’s move in, and friends on Staten Island stored her stuff the first summer.

I now understand what a huge favor everyone did for me.

Picture the scene – this particular dorm building is 19 floors with students living on 2nd and above. There are three elevators located in the center of a long, long hall with rooms along the sides and extra clusters at the end. There are two sets of stairs offset about 1/2 way down the corridor on each side. FYI there is no 13th floor. When we arrived there were three huge industrial size dumpsters across the drive full to overflowing. Between 0900-1300 I saw the city flat bed at least four times making the full for empty exchange. The parking was limited and the security personnel strictly enforced the one way traffic pattern.

Inside the building someone had smartly labeled the elevators with “2-6″ 7-11″ 12-17” to expedite the move out. Even so, these are not huge elevators. While they could hold a dozen people once you start adding in hand-trucks, shopping carts, boxes and suitcases the capacity rapidly goes to zero.  There were line ups of people wanting to go up and hordes on each floor with all their worldly goods anxiously waiting to go down.

Miriam was on the 15th floor….

We went up to give her a hand with the last minute packing and hauling. I rapidly figured out that carrying light stuff down the stairs was much faster than waiting for the elevator. I also found that the line for the middle elevator was shorter. Riding to the 11th and walking up three flights was much quicker. I stopped counting trips; I really didn’t want to know.  The line never seemed to diminish; the security personnel said that yesterday was just as hectic but mostly undergrads moving out. Today it was mostly grads which mean even more sorting and tossing.

I saw parents maintaining a sense of humor and those who were about to lose it. The new grads bidding final farewells. Security just shaking their heads at all the stuff going into the dumpsters. One of them has a daughter starting college next fall. Ah ha! I thought and asked her if she had any use for a mini-fridge & tiny microwave? Oh, yes. Gave her the room number and two more still functional items passed along to the next. Pratt gave up on the pass along room several years ago when students proved incapable of distinguishing useful items and garbage (half used jars of mayo? I mean really….)

She made the clearance deadline and most of her stuff went to storage (several firms now have a pickup/drop off container service).  I was singularly unimpressed at the apartment we viewed that afternoon (nor with the management company who seems way more invasive than I remember).

So she is still housing hunting but is now willing to look outside the Pratt area which should markedly increase her chances of finding something.

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