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First Box packed!! Only 60-70 more to go!!I've moved a few times in my life. It's never been much of a hassle and I usually kind of enjoy it. My family and I had lived in the same house for about 7 years now. Over the last 7 years, while feeling settled, I've definitely added the most pieces to my collection in that time. Last time I moved to a new home, I had around 1000 items in my collection and just a few shelves and a handful of consoles. Nothing crazy and was a fairly smooth move. Turns out it's moving time once again......
But this time there is
SO much more to worry about!!
This move is very different than any other move I've done in the past. This time the gaming part of my life has expanded to the point that it physically outnumbers the rest of my family's combined possessions. Mental illness aside, this means that over half of our moving trucks are going to be transporting my hobby/passion to a new home. And it's no small undertaking. It's a lot to organize, fret about, pack, carry and explain to people. As of this move, my collection sat right around 5500 pieces of software, about 40 consoles (handhelds not included in that number), over a dozen types of shelving, several hundred guides and books, dozens of posters/promo items/soundtracks/figures/statues/collectibles/etc. It was a bit overwhelming compared to my previous moves.
[img width=700 height=393]https://c4.staticflickr.com/6/5780/30624456371_f22335479c_b.jpg[/img][img width=576 height=1024]https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5605/30078406113_3b48252076_b.jpg[/img][img width=576 height=1024]https://c3.staticflickr.com/6/5458/30676253626_374268c442_b.jpg[/img][img width=576 height=1024]https://c4.staticflickr.com/6/5671/30078418203_fe907ed6cb_b.jpg[/img]A little glimpse at the former glory of my gameroomWe had about a month to get moving, so on that first day I started packing up. I knew it would take me many boxes and hours, so I had no time to waste. Each time we got a tabletop order at the store, I took all the boxes home, and had tons of friends bring me their boxes whenever they could. It still didn't seem like enough, so we started hitting up grocery and hardware stores to make sure we had enough to go around. Packing most games was easy. These weren't traveling internationally and games are relatively durable so mostly I just jammed as many carts or jewel cases into a box as it could fit and sealed them. Because of how many boxes I anticipated, I made sure to label each box very well and mark it if I was comfortable having another box stacked on top of it. As I was loading up each collection, I would make a point of pulling out any items that I thought had some significant value to them or that I felt needed some extra TLC to arrive safely (a hard to find boxed item, sealed games, oddly shaped boxes, easily damaged jewel cases, etc).
After about a week of packing, I had pretty much every game packaged up that I didn't pull aside for special packing. Easy part done. Now the real work began. What I was left with was still a massive number of special non-games items and valuable or easily damaged items to deal with. This is where it started to get overwhelming. Like with any problem you just have to break it down to smaller parts and get started. So I spent the next few days boxing up what I thought would be the next easiest items, books. Books are unfortunately for me, all different sizes and didn't fit in boxes quite as well as the games did. They also made for quite heavy boxes that were a strain to move and had to be placed on the bottom of piles so they didn't crush anything else. Once that was done, I spent a couple days bagging up cords and controllers so they were easy to separate and hook up once I unpacked. This was very time consuming and didn't make a huge dent in the stuff that got packed. It really felt like I wasn't accomplishing as much as I should have even though I knew it would make the unpacking go smoother.
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The depressing remains of my former game room ......... 
After those jobs were done, it was time for the real messy stuff. Trying to fit statues, figures, special edition boxes and promo items nicely into a box was quite the challenge. It was really hard to get things into a box to both maximize what t I could fit and to ensure the items were going to arrive safe (no punched holes in boxes or broken pieces if a box was bumped). After the brisk pace of packing games and books, it was a very slow burn moving forward the rest of the time. I went to our local hardware store and had them cut some large PVC tubes for me to use for my posters, which worked really well and I wasn't worried for a second about damage because they were so heavy duty. I used a lot of packing materials to make sure figures and statues were safely tucked away and wrapped towels and blankets around the consoles I was worried about. Things slowly started to disappear from the gameroom and soon became monstrous piles of boxes in my basement.
Shelving was easy enough to move, it just took some time since there was a lot of it and about half needed to have shelves removed for transport. Finally, only the valuables were left. I painstakingly wrapped most of these items in bubble wrap, used much smaller boxes to avoid crushing, and made sure that it was me or someone I trusted transporting them in the front seat of their vehicle. Even with the extra care, I was a bit worried about something happening to the not easily or cheaply replaced items.
Moving day came and went and after an extremely long and late day, my friends and I had packaged everything up safely, loaded it into our moving truck, and unloaded it to my new place. Now to make something special out of my new space!!
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New bigger room full of new bigger possibilities!!
