Confessions of a furniture mover: What I’m really thinking about you and your junk

Working at a moving company gave me an inside view on the tyranny (undue severity or harshness) of ownership–how people are weighed down and even trapped by their possessions.

The houses here, in Vermont, have basements. So, often, when being led through the house by the client who’s showing us all the furniture they want hauled, they will inevitably say, “But that’s not all, let me show you what goes in the basement.”

Then, we follow the client down the steps into the basement aka the-house-that’s-under-the-house that’s being used a storage unit for all the stuff that is not being used. A sea of junk–tables, chairs, sports equipment, toys, electronics, exercise equipment, including a a treadmill, an elliptical machine–usually covered in dust and often with clothes draped over the hand bars.

For the last few months of this job, every day was a wearisome treadmill–driving from house to house, surveying the furniture that needed to be moved, then having to carry it down steps and up the ramp into the back of the truck, and repeating this for 8 hours straight on multiple jobs. Usually, the home owners left the dressers with the drawers inside, full of clothes and assorted items. The furniture itself was frequently layered in dust.

I remember hoisting one half of a dresser up to my waistline. When the other mover picked up his half of the dresser, dust slid from the top of the dresser into my mouth and face. It was disgusting. Then, with a mouthful of dust, my hands gripping each side of the shelf from the bottom, I shuffled down the narrow stairs and up the wobbly ramp into the truck.

A lot of the guys who I worked with had injuries from moving furniture, including fractured bones, bruises, cut fingers, back pain, etc. Even I injured myself at least three times.

A few days after starting, I was carrying a heavy object and hadn’t been told that the ramp had been removed from the loading dock. While holding the object, I fell into the space between the loading dock and the truck, and just before my right leg caught the tail end of the truck to prevent the tall, my left leg hit the steel lift gate that was folded up beneath the truck. The impact was just below the knee. The pain was almost unbearable. I felt like I was going to be sick, it hurt that bad.

On another occasion, after helping with a crew of 4 others, lift an 800 pound flat stove into a filthy, greasy kitchen, the stove slammed into my finger at the top, leaving a large gash. I probably should have gotten stitches, but did not.

One afternoon it began raining and I walked ever so carefully on the truck ramp, as patches of the tread were missing. Near the bottom of the ramp, while carrying a TV stand, with glass doors, I slipped. I landed holding the TV stand but after it bounced in my lap, the glass shattered, cutting my wrist.

The owner just stood there in the garage and didn’t say anything. I apologized for breaking the TV stand and told him he could file a claim and probably get a discount. He just grunted.

The job was an ordeal, because it usually involved moving heavy furniture in narrow spaces, up and down stairs, into elevators.

After working there for a while, I began to sell off my possessions, first on Craig’s List, then on Amazon. I didn’t want any part of owning more than I could carry in the Honda. And I didn’t want to put anyone through the ordeal of having to move my furniture. Ever.

Enough about me, though. Let’s talk about you.

Do you own things, or do things own you, since they require cleaning, maintenance, repair, insurance, and the eventual destination of the curb, the thrift store, an eager recipient, or the junkyard, only to be followed by the inevitable upgrade.

If you’re not careful to do a self-check, it’s easy to land on the treadmill of working to buy more stuff that you think will satisfy you.

But at the end of the day, it will not satisfy you. Deep down inside, you know that. But for some reason, you convince yourself into believing that owning that one thing will change everything.

If you think things will make you happy, read Ecclesiastes in The Bible. You’ll learn about a King who could buy anything he wanted, and what he came to conclude at the end of his life.