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I am moving to a new house a few miles away. Apologies to my neighbors who are finding out by reading this. When you live in the suburbs, I suppose the proper thing to do is stand on the stoop a la Tony Soprano and be belly-forward with personal news, but I'd rather disassociate by lining up hoarded hotel shampoos like a glass menagerie. Also, saying the words makes it final.

We stumbled on a new home that checked most boxes on our wish list besides "floor-to-ceiling 'Beauty and the Beast' bookshelves with sliding ladder." The other owner wanted out, closing went fast and we looked up and suddenly owned two homes.

Oops! A terrible idea, financially and logistically! We've been moving out of Home One into Home Two for weeks, ferrying carloads of boxes so we can quickly list our place. This order of real estate transaction seems stupid, yet I wonder: Is there any good way to move? All methods involve swaths of pretend money and stress, and I wouldn't have wanted to do it the other way, either.

Say you sell House One before buying House Two. For starters, you have to keep it clean -- not just regular clean, but show clean. There is simply no way I could leave a decorative rolled hand towel on the bathroom counter for a month. No way I could vacate the premises at a moment's notice. How to explain to prospective buyers that, no, no, it's my JOB to roam around this house, pants optional, hugging a laptop like a deranged marsupial? I really am busy!

Then what? Then you sell House One and ... become a POD person? Rent an interim house? Shack up with a family member whose love you can afford to lose? When you finally find House Two, which actually is House Three by this point, you have moved your entire life twice, which is traumatic and sinister.

Don't get me wrong, my way is not good, either. As it stands, everything I own is dolloped across the miles like sour cream on life's burrito. I cannot go anywhere nice because A) I don't have any cash, and B) I cannot locate my hairbrush. Fine, since we're trying to minimize restaurants and delivery (see: tufts of dust puffing from wallets). However, most of my dishes are packed. Can one boil spaghetti on a paper plate?

These are good problems to have, of course. It's a blessing to be able to buy a house in this weird up-and-down market, in Florida, a state enmeshed in an insurance crisis, in a country where affordable housing is stretched and mortgage rates creep down slowly.

But how as a society have we not remedied the awkwardness of moving? Studies call moving one of the most stressful life events a human endures, right up there with divorce and death. How have our capitalist minds not developed a solution involving storage lockers with beds, like a mixed-use development for relocation? Can't the cost be worked into the amortization schedule? Where is "Shark Tank" on this?

I've thought about this a lot while driving to Goodwill 64 times. I think I finally figured it out.

The chaos has to happen. The neck-straining stress of moving is the catalyst for action, the host for bravery to feed upon.

Otherwise, I would personally die in one place. I would look up at the house I've adored and begrudged for years, notice how the sun drenches the stucco when I walk the dog at dusk. I'd think about the relationships that rotted and bloomed there, the late-night dances in the kitchen, the greasy pizza movie sessions, the pile of kicked-off shoes in the corner, the little frog that lives on the patio. If I didn't get epically frustrated right at the end, it would be too difficult to abandon the holy specter of birthday streamers and holiday dinners and wine-dappled talks and sticky grass seeds and children scampering down the sidewalk.

It would be impossible to know it's time to give this house to someone else, to give another house a chance at becoming home.

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Stephanie Hayes is a columnist at the Tampa Bay Times in Florida. Follow her at @stephhayes on X or @stephrhayes on Instagram.

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