Don’t do it. We would have avoided it if we could have, but we couldn’t. First, our West LA apartment consistently flooded during every rain storm. I love the sound of a trickling waterfall as much as the next pseudo-Zen-Buddhist, but not when it’s soaking my carpet and tv. With the pending rainy season, we knew we had to get out.
We found a place in sunny Santa Monica, just 8 blocks from the beach. Running on the beach, running and swimming at Santa Monica College, walking to the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market.. it all seemed perfect. Our quality of life would go up all around, we’d exercise more, eat organic food, and we’d probably even get a tan. We called Delancey Street to schedule some movers because I’ve only heard raves about them, but they were all booked up. I hit the Craigslist and found a listing for Movers For Less. They gave me a quote of about $270 which was about $250 less than most other movers were quoting. I scheduled, they showed up with two guys, they worked super hard and super fast and in the end it was like $260 for a move that took under 3 hours. We were very happy with their service and planned on using them again if we ever moved.
Well we did, two weeks later.
Why would anyone put themselves through all of the stress that goes along with moving, twice in one month? The hating yourself for owning so much crap that you have to pack and unpack and reorganize into feng shui hiding places, the attempting to decorate, the forwarding mailing addresses, the having Time Warner come by because even though they provide the worst service of any company you’ve ever dealt with no one seems to know of a better alternative, the scheduling DirecTV to show up and walk around on your roof and drill holes in the wall and floor because DirecTV is actually a better alternative to Time Warner Cable… the getting to know your new neighbors.
Getting to know our new neighbors was VERY easy. Why? Because our apartment was separated from our next door neighbor’s apartment by a thin sheet of metal in two places, the wall heater and the medicine cabinet. That’s right, I’d wake up and grab the floss out of the medicine cabinet only to hear our neighbor doing the same thing. If I walked into the bathroom at night without turning the lights on, light would beam through the medicine cabinet from her apartment. Yeah that’s great. We got to know our neighbor pretty well through those thin pieces of metal, and trust me it was unavoidable. For example, she has a pretty bad foot fungus spreading on her foot and she’s having guy trouble. Judging by the amount of times she complained about both during very frequent and very long phone conversations, I’m not sure which was bothering her more. I did not want that fungus making it’s way through the wall heater though.
Then I was watching tv at about 10:15pm on a Sunday night, at normal-person volume. Normal person volume is a few decibles lower than UCLA student playing RockBand volume, maybe around the same volume as a cough or sneeze. It was normal. Our downstairs neighbor decided to come up and let us know that her bedroom was directly under our living room and she could hear the TV while she was trying to go to sleep. We decided right then that we were going to have to pack up all the crap, hire movers, unpack the crap, feng shui and all that. Great.
Quick Sidenote: All of our neighbors were pilates instructors. Here’s something I learned from our brief stay eight blocks from the ocean – Pilates instructors are WEIRD. They look at you weird, they love talking about themselves, and the most noticeable thing, they all seem to be MISERABLE. I was under the impression that people that did pilates on a regular basis were more at peace with themselves and the world. NOT TRUE. Okay that’s just my impression after living in very close proximity to three pilates instructors for two weeks. I’m sure there are very nice and normal pilates instructors around, and if you’re one of them or know a nice normal pilates instructor in the Los Angeles area, leave us a comment below. Also, if you go to pilates classes and have suddenly contracted a foot fungus, we’d like to hear about that too.
Ok so we called Delancey Street again, just because the idea of having ex-cons come into our apartment sounded like a good idea, and again I’ve heard raves about it, and well, this blog needs more local reviews. All booked up again. Here’s my review of Delancey Street – Book well in advance. Ok. We hired Movers For Less again, and again they worked hard and super fast. We even made it harder on these guys than the previous two because we didn’t move anything ourselves, we just boxed it all up. It came to $250 and took around 2.5 hours.
Now we are back where we should be, on the West LA/Santa Monica line. We love West LA, it’s become our home.. and now that we’re a few blocks closer to the ocean, we’re dusting our bikes off. Plus we have the Brentwood Country Club to jog around, which is more scenic than the Santa Monica College track anyway. Best part, only one neighbor borders us on one wall. I’m staying up til 10:30pm watching TV now, IT’S NUTS!
Movers For Less
866-331-3343
www.MoversForLess.net
