Wife and I moved from NY to NC in March. It was the single hardest thing I have ever done.
We were in our old house 21 years, so we accumulated a lot of stuff. And we moved to a larger house, so while we purged a lot of the "why are we keeping this?" junk, a LOT of stuff came with us. We also don't have kids, so over the years, our money went to "us" / hobbies / etc - I have nice audio equipment, a large collection of vinyl, a movie collection that rivals a video store, tons of tools, etc. - it all came with us.
We packed ourselves, but hired movers to move everything. Took us a month to pack up after closing on the new house (we bought the new house, then quickly sold the old privately after we closed - thank you NYC-influenced super hot real estate market). In retrospect, I should have hired the movers to pack too because it was really hard. But I was so firmly entrenched in my mancave/office that I (stupidly) felt I was the only one who could properly dismantle/pack it. I also took two truckloads down myself of things I didn't trust the movers with (audio gear/computers/etc). One truckload for the closing trip, and one for the final move a month later.
Unpacking took a month, and there's still a little left to do, but it's stuff that can wait until we get things painted / get some electrical work done (now that we closed on the old house, we can pour some money into this house making it the way we want.) My wife had to go find a new job (she did - got a great work at home job in mortgage closings - she started this week). I work for myself at home, so my work came with me. I took a week off to move, but started back up again amongst boxes of stuff (I still don't have a proper desk - it's coming next week, hopefully).
We were wondering how her job search would go, as we just up and moved without health insurance / job for her in place. She's 59, but a solid background in real estate closings / paralegal, so we didn't feel it would be too risky (when we closed, the closing attorney offered her a job, but the 45 min commute would have made her miserable fast.) We bought health insurance ourselves until she got something she wanted (i.e. work at home if possible, which happened).
I actually worked myself into a double hernia from all this - between throwing out tons of junk from the old house to carrying things up to my new upstairs bonus room/office, my body said "err, you're not 35 anymore". Got that handled last week, and am well on the mend.
So we're here in NC, new life, new adventure, waaay less snow, but still 4 seasons - exactly what we were after. Wife has a great new job, solid bennies, great house / yard / neighborhood / etc. Good place to grow old.
But yea, moving itself sucks. If I could do it over again, I'd be a little less "only I can do that" and just let the movers pack it all up.
