If moving is an experience that moves you to tears, then Dona Hollifield has some words of advice: Transform your trauma into adventure.
Hollifield, a Chicago-based moving consultant, is seasoned in the subject. After 22 moves of her own-two trans-Atlantic, 10 cross-country and 10 in-city-she decided to market her hard-earned skill.
”Moving is right up there with death and divorce. It`s a traumatic time for people because they know they`re rootless. There`s something terribly insecure about not having an address for your mail,” says the well-traveled Hollifield. ”But,” she adds, ”my theory is that moving is a real adventure. It`s easy to become complacent or stale about things. Moving is a stretching exercise.”
Hollifield`s ”stretches,” not all that surprisingly, included some memorable adventures. There was the time she and her first husband moved from New Orleans to Charlottesville, Va., and arrived before the moving van and their furnishings. ”We slept in the attic wrapped in blankets. We got the feel of the new place; we were camping,” recalls Hollifield.
Or there was the time she and her current husband, Clarence Passons, moved to Boston from Dublin. ”Our stuff was in customs for two weeks. We had no control,” she says.
A shattering experience
And then there was the Houston move during which Hollifield hand-carried a cameo glass chandelier all the way from Chicago, only to have painters accidentally drop an empty paint can on the box containing her fragile treasure at her new apartment.
”I painstakingly glued it back together one piece at a time like a jigsaw puzzle,” recalls Hollifield, nodding toward the seemingly unscathed fixture that hangs in her current home`s front hallway. ”Always,” she warns, ”put breakables out of the way, in a closet or kitchen cabinets, so they won`t get damaged by workmen during the move.”
Adventure, however, isn`t the only byproduct of Hollifield`s moves; the consultant also learned the best ways to do the job smoothly. For example, weeding out is fundamental to the before-the-move process.
”There`s no way to get around the cost of moving. That`s why you really shouldn`t drag (along) anything you don`t like,” she says. ”I guess I`m ruthless about furniture. If it doesn`t please you or have a function, it`s not like it`s a part of your permanent body. You can always replace it with something better.”
One of Hollifield`s most challenging opportunities to weed out came in the form of a merger. A Clearwater, Fla., couple in their 70s had decided to tie the knot and combine households.
Paring down
”He had big, masculine desks, overstuffed chairs and was a strictly brown and green guy. She had very nice white bamboo (furniture) with pastel upholstery,” Hollifield recalls. ”I had to go in and look at their furniture and decide what would work together. I pinpointed someone who bought antiques, located resale shops and we got rid of all the excess. Then we organized the move. It was complicated. The moving van had to make two stops before going to their new townhouse.”
Hollifield is also a big believer in pre-organizing when possible. While she concedes that ”nothing ever works exactly as it does on paper,” she`s found that diagraming floor plans, closets and even the kitchen cabinets in advance will help in visualizing a new home. If you`re making an in-city move and can have access to your new dwelling early, so much the better.
”Try to spend a day setting up your kitchen prior to the move,” she suggests. ”Get that monster done. The kitchen takes a lot of time and you literally can`t function in a new home until it`s set up. The bathroom is the same way.”
Likewise, especially in the case of long-distance moves, Hollifield advises some other preliminary footwork to avoid annoying delays after the move has been completed. Making address changes and opening new bank accounts are two. ”I always thought you could just give money to a bank and they`d open an account for you,” says Hollifield, who learned the hard way last summer. ”Banks are fussy. In Chicago, you need to have a credit check before you can open a checking account.” Additionally, ”most banks require two picture IDs, a major credit card and a home or job address.”
Interestingly, Hollifield believes that moves within the same building are the hardest from a physical standpoint. ”You think, `Oh gee, it`ll be easy. The mover will move my furniture and I`ll do everything else.` But really you end up carrying and moving everything yourself.”
Time and motion
Hollifield , who has lived in seven apartments at her current address and in a neighboring high-rise, insists that every trip should count. ”Use one thing to carry another. We packed our suitcases with dishes wrapped in towels.” Large trash bags with drawstrings are another transporting tool on Hollifield`s list.
Speaking of lists, in an attempt to better organize her own moves, Hollifield began compiling lists of her moving activity. ”I started making lists of addresses that needed to be changed. Then I`d make packing lists:
what I would pack, what the movers would pack and what I was going to carry with me. With a move, there`s so many minor details, so many things to think about, all little and all vital,” she says.
Ultimately, Hollifield`s talents were tapped by friends who were overwhelmed by their impending moves. One in particular, who was making a move from Chicago to Boulder, Colo., five years ago, called Hollifield in desperation. ”She`d never lived any place except Chicago,” explains Hollifield. So the moving expert sent her friend some spiral notebooks filled with notes she`d compiled over the years. ”That`s how I started moving
(people) by mail,” she says.
Helpful booklet
Today, Hollifield`s moving tips have been assembled for purchase in booklet form. ”It`s Your Move” ($3.95, plus $1 for postage) gives an overview of the dos and don`ts of the moving process.
For those seeking the real McCoy, Hollifield herself can be hired for consultation. An initial meeting to evaluate your move and devise an organizational strategy costs $50. All subsequent work is billed at $35 an hour.
”Let`s face it,” says Hollifield, ”even if you hire movers, there`s a lot of pre-moving organization to do. The mover can`t decide what books you`re going to keep, what furniture is going into your apartment. The mover can`t sort out your clothes and linens or advise you on what you should get rid of.”
Some, however, still prefer their own way of doing things. A radiologist who consulted Hollifield last spring during her Boston-to-Chicago move wasn`t sold on the idea of unpacking her boxes as quickly as possible. ”She`s had all of her boxes in one room since the end of April and she`s still unpacking,” says Hollifield. ”She is putting everything away perfectly. She`s ironing all of her clothes before hanging them in the closet and alphabetizing all of her books.”
Hollifield, on the other hand, ”love(s) seeing a home come alive. I like it to look like a home immediately. That`s the goal: to get the turmoil away.”
To order a copy of ”It`s Your Move,” write Dona Hollifield, 900 N. Lake Shore Drive, Chicago 60611.
