What I’ve learned about moving:

1) You must have friends who will help you. You cannot do this by yourself. And I’m not talking about the help you needed when you moved in your 20s and you rounded up your brother and his friends and other random males and fed them beer and pizza to move your couch. We’re way beyond that at this point. Because even though my husband and I are now mature grownups who can pay the professionals (who are still 20-something-year-old males, by the way) to do the heavy lifting, you still need friends. Friends to tell you to ditch the box of cross-stitch patterns you’ve carted around for years because you WILL do them someday. Friends to make you face up to the fact that you have eight wooden toast tongs, three cheese graters and a whole drawer full of kitchen gadgets you cannot identify. Friends who make you question if you’ll ever really wear that silver lame dress. If you don’t have friends like that, get some before you move. You’re welcome.

2) You must have a husband who is kind and patient and understanding, even when the contents of the storage pod everybody forgot about are unloaded in your new garage and you’re left with 25 — count ’em, 25 — plastic boxes of undetermined origin. You need a husband who simply sighs and smiles and clears out some more space. If you don’t ‘have a husband like that, get one before you move. You’re doubly welcome.

3) And, finally, you must have a sense of humor, a tendency toward flexibility and an unflappable sense of balance that is not thrown off when you can’t find your earrings, your hair dryer, any matching pair of shoes or your big Kitchen Aid stand mixer. I can understand how the earrings and hair dryer and shoes might be lurking in boxes somewhere, but I’m really baffled by the disappearance of the mixer. Stay tuned …