Don't Get Macho. Get Movers.

Finding an amazing new place to live is glorious. The potential for a new and different series of rooms where you actually live the kind of life you always meant to get around to living is almost intoxicating. Of course you'll entertain more! You'll paint the walls an actual color! Interior design will happen! With more daylight or higher ceilings or a garage or storage shed, everything will fall into place at home sweet home and everywhere else you go.

This lovely series of daydreams is followed, tragically, by the reason you promise beer to all of your friends. Moving is kind of a nightmare. Movers, on the other hand, are a little bit of salvation that shows up at your old front door and carries you through your new one.

These people magically have enough boxes and plenty of bubble wrap and know how to pack things well. They can fit more of your stuff on a truck than you'd have thought possible. They can deliver all of your myriad possessions in one trip. Their spatial relations skills alone should have you booking them the moment you sign a new lease or close on a house.

They also have stronger arms and backs than you do. Sure, you go to the gym and run in the park and play a little basketball on the weekends. You're in shape. That's obvious. They lift and carry heavy things all day, every day. They maneuver furniture and refrigerators and washers and dryers and other things that go on dollies. It's not a macho thing. It's professionalism.

In the midst of the chaos of your soon to be vacant house, you would probably like to exert a little control over something. Just about anything will do. If you've hired movers, you're in luck. You have at your disposal people whose job it is to pack, transport, and deliver all that you had no idea you owned. They'll even put all those boxes and all that furniture wherever you say it needs to go. If you ask nicely, they might even rearrange it all a bit once you see how odd the couch looks in that corner.

You may find yourself willing to give your movers the shirt off your back as you skip calculating a tip and forget whether you're supposed to add gratuity at all. Resist the impulse. They've already hauled the rest of your shirts and jeans and books and bookshelves and tables and chairs plus the piano and the unspeakably heavy antique china cabinet you inherited from your great aunt.

Do be sure to thank them, though, without the offer of pizza and beer. Under no circumstances should you be encouraging your guardian angels to open a cold one as they drive away. You are perfectly capable of drinking one for them. You'll need it before you start unpacking those boxes.