Musette's Profile

My worst moving story:

After living four months with an abusive boyfriend (an ill-advised move in its own right), I decided enough is enough and was seeking refuge in a new living space to reclaim my happiness.

An old friend offered to rent me the upstairs floor (the loft) of her bungalow home at a reasonable rate. I gratefully accepted. I remodeled the upstairs of her home with her. I purchased and installed wall-to-wall carpeting myself (!) and helped her repaint the walls of the entire second floor. I even went to Lowe's the same day of my grandma's funeral to lug the heavy carpeting up to the second floor of my friend's home, just relieved that I would be getting a new start. I figured taking care of my immediate safety would be worth putting off my grief temporarily.

I moved all of my belongings myself from the upstairs of my abusive ex's house -- where I had just moved into several months earlier and hadn't ever even fully unpacked yet -- without anyone's help, not even my friend's. She would just sit on the couch smoking pot while I moved everything, trip after trip, without offering any assistance. (I didn't want to ask the same friends who had just months earlier moved me into my then-boyfriend's place, since I consider moving to be a huge PITA and a big favor to ask, much less multiple times in one year).

A couple weeks later, right after I had finished remodeling her upstairs and was ready to move in finally, she texts me to tell me that she no longer thinks it's a good idea that I move in, and that I'll have to find somewhere else to rent. No explanation offered, even though I was begging for an explanation of some sort. Stunned and desperate, I start the search for a new apartment all over again, this time with even more additional pressure to find somewhere to live so that I can get my stuff out of her house and the few items still at my ex's.

Well, in the midst of searching for yet another place to call home, I go to her house one day and I discover that she had carelessly left the door to the loft (my would-be apartment there) open and had let her filthy cats onto the second floor, where all of my stuff had been stored in what would have been my bedroom there. The cats had urinated all over all of my belongings -- everything! Being in the middle of a very hot summer, the summer heat had just baked the cat pee smell into everything. My so-called friend had made no attempts to clean up any of their filth, and only paid a small fraction of my dry cleaning bill. Ultimately, I had to throw a lot of my belongings out, and spent months and months doing load after load of disinfecting laundry of what was left. I am still to this day dealing with items I find occasionally that need to be laundered or thrown away because of her cats.

The big irony is that I never even lived there, not for a single day. So much of my time, money, effort, emotions, friendship and possessions were wasted during that move, and I didn't even "get" to live at that place (not that I would have wanted to once I realized her entire house was a cat toilet). Her one filthy cat gave me a very difficult time while I was moving all of my stuff out, too...hissing at me for no reason...nasty thing.

To add insult to injury, I think my then-friend was concerned that I'd set her house on fire in frustration and anger or something, so she had neighbors across the street pretending to have a conversation outside on the sidewalk but actually were watching my every move as I struggled to move everything out by myself.

In hindsight, I probably should have just sued her. The damage was extensive enough that I certainly could have. Needless to say, we are not friends anymore.

The story doesn't stop there, since I had to move everything again in the middle of a sweltering hot July (by myself, of course!) to a place I soon found (a 3rd floor attic efficiency) -- but that's sadly just a minor detail in my worst moving story.