WHAT IS HOME
On Moving During a Pandemic Relocating in the middle of COVID-19 isn’t easy, but with care and planning, it can be done.
Apartments.com reported in June a substantial increase in people looking for suburban rentals verses downtown markets. Columbus ranked eighth on the list, with a 48 percent increased interest in suburban rentals during the period surveyed. It was the last day of June when I saw this media release, but the news was no surprise to me. In fact, my spouse and I had been among those who—in the first week of the declared pandemic—had quickly changed a plan that involved temporary housing in the LeVeque Tower Downtown. “Please, bear with me” I said to my husband. “I’m about to flip-flop.” He and I were in Florida, at a condo we had purchased in February, planning some renovations and hoping to make it livable by the time our third grandchild was due there in late April. It was March 18, and we were both staring at our computers at the time I interrupted him. He was working remotely during a week he thought would be vacation, and I was reading a lease for the LVQ apartment we planned to use for a year while we considered our next Central Ohio move. In February, we received an unsolicited offer for our previous home, a Waterford Tower condo, which was scheduled to close toward the end of March. “I’m having second thoughts about living 21 floors in the sky, with elevators, elevator buttons and 58
COLUMBUS MONTHLY HOME & GARDEN FALL/WINTER 2020-21
everything else that could carry germs,” I confided. “I know. I get it,” he said, looking up from his work. By then we both knew that Red, White & Boom, as well as other Downtown festivities for the summer and fall likely would be canceled. Many of our favorite restaurants would soon shut down. Anyone who knows me well understands that it has long been my desire to live temporarily at the LeVeque so that I could enjoy delivery from The Keep, which is a bespoke amenity. In an afternoon of swift changes, the Kaufman management company quickly shifted us to a lovely suburban rental, in a peaked-ceiling carriage house within walking distance of Starbucks, which really should have remained open as an essential business. We were in Florida, as I mentioned, so we accepted this deal without even viewing the place or its delightful, walkable neighborhood that has vastly improved over the last few years. It all turned out fine. In fact, it is quite efficient living for this very odd year. What was even more fabulous was that my masked husband flew back to Ohio with only nine people on an early morning Southwest flight and oversaw the entire move by himself. It’s the first time ever, I believe, that he’s packed that entire kitchen. I feel only slightly bad that he also packed my home office and my closet.
ILLUSTRATION: ISTOCK.COM/INVINCIBLE_BULLDOG
BY SHERRY BECK PAPROCKI
