Moving Experience

By its very nature, moving is un-settling. Since my last post, I've packed up from my temporary sabbatical retreat after 3 mo in Seattle, driven across country back to Wisconsin via a visit with friends in Idaho where I lived for 13 yr, packed and moved out of a 4 br house with full basement into a 2 br apt, distributing my accumulated possessions among the apt, storage unit, family, friends, charitable donations, trash and auction. With time out for two trips, to IN and AL, I spent most of 5-6 weeks unpacking, organizing, arranging and rearranging so that I could finally feel pretty well settled in.
Along the way I've been thinking about what determines when one is settled. Looking around the apt complex I notice how many garages are doing duty as storage units, watch others moving in and out and wonder why some folks are less un-settled by transitions in housing. What does it take to have sense of being rooted? Why do some people accumulate possessions - and require more roots - while others are more comfortable being nomadic?
I'm wondering if there isn't some equation that can be used to predict how long it will take after a move to feel at home. Somehow you'd have to factor in the ratio of rooms moved from to rooms moved to, distance from old place to new, add number of boxes to unpack, multiply by number of people in family and their ages, divide by days of paid moving help, multiply by number of stairways to be negotiated, subtract available days to devote to process without outside responsibilities like a job or parenting. Then there are the hard to measure factors like one's willingness to ask for help, ages and back condition of friends/family available to help, and one's own need for organization and ability to live with chaos.
One friend says the first thing she does is find a place to hang a special piece of art created by her son. Some folks need to put their kitchen in order first, others their bedroom. And how do you know when you're done moving in? When the last box is unpacked is one milestone, but just getting things out of the boxes and into drawers and cabinets isn't the same as having things "put away" in their place. Figuring out where to hang things always takes awhile for me.
Then there are life routines. How long does it take take to reach for a glass without thinking which door to open, or to drive to the closest grocery without planning the route in advance, or find everything on your list without going up and down every aisle twice, or to write your return address without hesitating, or to learn the numbers of your favorite channels? Does the move mean getting new driver's license, auto registration, insurance company, doctor, dentist, phone company? Most dreadful of all is having to find someone to "do" our hair! Nor have I mentioned leaving friends behind and having to meet and make new ones.
All of which takes time and energy, and lots of it. And usually no way to short cut the process. So does it take living through each season at least once? Or does it simply take a certain degree of activity and motion like a full box of cereal compacts or settles in transit? Or is it more like the length of time water must be stil for sediment to settle to the bottom and every time the water is disturbed, it becomes cloudy again?