Aranel's Profile

I just moved from a bustling metropolis of less than 800 people (no grocery store) to a tiny town of less than 90 (still no grocery store). Before moving out here I lived in a fairly large city. So, yeah: Culture shock. Totally a thing.

Travel: You do not run out to the store whenever you miss something. You save up all your city errands and do them at once. Depending on where you live you can make a fun day of it--stop somewhere nice to eat, fancy stuff like that. This is really frustrating at first, but you'll get the hang of it.

Driving: Your car expenses will be different. Not necessarily more unless you are commuting for work, but different. If you are dealing with a lot of gravel roads, that will affect your vehicle (esp. your tires--they have to be replaced sooner). You also need to remember to get your car washed in the winter (when it is warm enough for the car wash to be open) because the salt used on the roads can destroy your paint.

Unless you need to drive off-road or spend a LOT of time on hilly gravel roads, you probably do not need four-wheel-drive. I have done just fine with my little Chevy Prizm for five years in snowy rural Minnesota (where it is snowing--today--in May). AWD is more useful if you have to deal with rough conditions, mud, and/or deep snow. If the snow is that deep and the roads haven't been cleared yet, you're better off staying off them anyway.

Food: Check out small-town festivals (my first home in Minnesota had "Lefse Days" with delicious Scandinavian-themed goodies) and church suppers, especially if there are ethnic-specific congregations. In rural communities, church suppers are a major social event and the food is often fantastic, plus you get a TON of it for the price. There tends to be less variety but what there is can be quite good. For more exotic stuff, cook it yourself from supplies off the Internet, or save up all your cravings for a trip to a bigger town.

Shopping: The Internet is your friend. If you can get regular USPS mail delivered to your house you can get most things delivered that way. (If you have to use a PO Box you just have to be more strategic about it because you have to pick it up when the counter is open.) In a quite rural community even the UPS guy will likely just drop things off even if you are not home to sign for them.

Cable/Internet/etc.: Don't expect nearly the same number of choices that you have in a large city. You may or may not get any channels of broadcast TV. Before you decide for sure that you're, say, going to use your smartphone for all your telephone and Internet needs, be sure that your cell reception is going to be up to the task. My experience is that big-city folks (I was one of them) get used to assuming that Internet and cell reception is everywhere. It isn't.

If you pick up a cheap humidity meter at a home-improvement store, you can quickly verify that it is the humidity that is the problem. Mostly you want it between 40 and 60, but if it is quite cold outside, it may need to be lower to avoid moisture problems like you are describing. I found this old article which gives some simple and specific guidelines (it's from Minneapolis so you'd think they would know what they are talking about).

I label all my boxes with red duct tape. It works great! Since red is my happy color, it always made me feel quite satisfied to finish up a box and slap a label on it!

But you were probably smart not to go with duct tape if you are going to use it to seal as well as label your boxes. Duct tape is very good for a great many things, but packing/shipping tape is specifically designed for putting together cardboard boxes. I sometimes would use a strip of my red duct tape when the regular tape was not handy and it does NOT hold together as well. (Maybe this depends on conditions, but that's what happened for me.) Use anything that sticks for labels, but use only good quality packing tape for constructing boxes if you want to make sure that everything survives the trip!

I had great success with packing a box a day. I made it work by packing a minimum of one box a day and keeping track with HabitRPG, which penalizes you if you don't do what you have said you will do and can be set to reward you if you do extra. (Hey, it worked for me.) As I got closer to moving day, I would spend larger chunks of time packing a bunch at once, but the commitment to at least one box a day kept me moving when I hit a frustrating spot.

I also had an extra room that I could use as a staging area for the packed boxes, a box of packing supplies that I could quickly carry with me from room to room, and an app on my iPod to make a quite detailed list of where I packed things. I am living in a temporary space for a few weeks before I can move into the more permanent place and unpack properly--at first the logistics of this drove me crazy, but with the detailed packing list and some planning ahead and improvisation, it is working out pretty well.