Yet Another Moving Post

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Started 10 months ago by Vivace
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Vivace
Member

@Gypsie: Thanks! I don't think I would have thought of that.

I'm looking around the apartment tonight and kind of freaking out. I spent a few hours going through old sketchbooks and saving the handful of decent art in each, and making arrangements to get rid of most of my painting supplies. I managed to pare down both my file box and my old journals box enough to combine the two, and that should progress!

But I still have no idea how we're going to pull this off. I feel really overwhelmed when I look around at everything. I know it's hard to see what's really going - for one thing, all the furniture's getting sold, so the vast majority of what's taking up space will be going. It's still hard to see there from here, though.

Guess I'll just keep going, one box at a time...

Posted 10 months ago #
Parsifal
Member

Agreed Gypsie! I'm in the process of transferring my renter's insurance now, and if it won't cover the move I will be purchasing additional insurance.

I work with a guy whose moving truck crashed and burned during an interstate move. Fortunately, his homeowner's insurance covered the loss.

More moving advice I wish I had gotten before the last time:

1. Make sure everything has a definite place in the truck BEFORE the movers arrive. You might think you can fit everything else in the car, but you will end up leaving behind things you don't want to throw away. You too could enjoy the sight of the apartment groundskeeper making off with cookware, clothes, unopened bottles of champagne etc. as fast as you can throw them out...

2. Take your car to a professional mechanic and do any necessary maintenance before the trip. I just decided what the heck, I'll get my tires rotated like I should, and the mechanic found that I was missing a lug nut. How does that happen?

3. Pay for the full service move even if you have to charge it. Sure it costs twice as much, but unless you happen to know several large individuals to help you carry a sofa up three flights of stairs, you'll be happier when your stuff arrives in one piece.

Posted 10 months ago #
Rosa
Member

One box at a time is the way to go, Vivace. You can do it!

If you know what size truck you're getting, you can stack the boxes as you finish them, and then measure the pile so you know if you have to purge more. I know that when we rented a storage unit so we could stage our house (just before the market crashed; we ended up not selling) it sounded really small, 4x6, but since it was just for stacking, not for living in, we never did even fill it half full.

Posted 10 months ago #
Vivace
Member

@Parsifal: Thanks for the advice about getting the car checked! I plan to do that.

I really think full-service movers would be overkill for us, plus my personal worst moving experience was a full-service move - stuff arrived broken, the movers demanded an extra $1k before they would deliver the stuff, and so on. It was a huge clusterf.

At least if I'm moving my own stuff, the only one who can screw it up is me, you know?

@Rosa: We're looking at an 8x5 trailer or the 8x5 ubox, so at least I only have one size to worry about. I alternate between thinking it'll be plenty and it'll be way too small, depending on my mood. XD

Posted 10 months ago #
Gypsie
Member

When we moved ourselves across country, before we had a house we put our stuff in storage. We lived in a Red Roof Inn for 5 weeks. Once we had our house, we had to get stuff from storage to the house. By this point, I was 7 months pregnant and it was August.

We used the U-haul website http://www.movinghelp.com/and hired three guys for 5 hours for about $250. It was our responsibility to rent the truck and drive it but they loaded the truck from the storage unit. Followed us to the new house and unloaded the truck. I just sat in the garage and directed the location of items. The 3 guys took less than 3 hours for the entire job! They were awesome! And I would definitely recommend that. You prepay on the site. The site gives you a code that you give to the workers after they have completed the job to your satisfaction.

You might want to check the site out for loading and unloading.

Posted 10 months ago #
cheesehead4ever
Member

Advice for putting stuff in storage! Factor the temperature into your plans. We had almost all of our belongings in a storage unit while we built a home. All of our photos etc. went to my in-laws house, but never thought about the few snow globes we owned. They froze solid and then shattered.

Posted 10 months ago #
Vivace
Member

@Gypsie: I'll definitely check it out; I think we're more likely to want it on the other end, so I'll bookmark that site on my phone.

@cheesehead4ever: I'd definitely be more worried about leaving stuff in storage here in the desert than on the other end - I'm not planning for anything to get stored more than a few weeks at most. But thanks for the advice!

Posted 10 months ago #
Anita
Member

Not sure if this is still relevant to the original post, but I found this out the other day, thought it was brilliant, so I'll share:

One of my friends moved this past weekend, and did something I'd never seen done before, but which makes a lot of sense: instead of buying moving boxes (or even getting them for free), she borrowed a bunch of big Rubbermaid bins from one of her friends. Apparently it made packing easier, and the movers (i.e. us) loved it; the bins were heavier than moving boxes, but they were much easier to carry, since they have actual handles. They're also much more durable, and once they were unpacked, they went back to the owner. I thought it was clever, especially because, on top of making moving easier, it also forced her to unpack everything at once (so she could return the bins), instead of leaving a few boxes for "later".

Posted 9 months ago #
Vivace
Member

@Anita: Thanks for the idea! Since we've moving a long way, I don't think we could borrow a bunch of plastic totes, but we do have a half-dozen or so we're planning to use for fragile things. My girlfriend is a big believer in using identically-sized boxes with handles - she swears by banker's boxes, which we can store flat and are quite sturdy for cardboard - but I think plastic Rubbermaid totes would have the same selling points plus being even sturdier.

I'm down to just under a month before the move. Our biggest triumph: My girlfriend and I are both total bookworms, but I managed to get all my books into ONE BOX and she's down to TWO, plus the two cookbooks that get packed with the kitchen stuff. (Last time she counted during a move she had SEVENTEEN and I had about the same, so this is HUGE for us.)

Posted 9 months ago #
Rosa
Member

That is huge, Vivace. You can totally make it work!

I actually prefer banker boxes to totes, because they aren't brittle & they give the stuff inside some padding. Rubbermaid can fail catastrophically, but cardboard fails kind of...squishily. Unless it gets wet, of course.

I had a boyfriend who kept pretty much all of his belongings in sturdy plastic shipping boxes, the kind they use to ship small heavy things (like bike parts) to stores - they are uniform, stack well, and he got them free from an employer that went out of business. When he wasn't using them, or moving, they were the support for his futon mattress - the only other furniture he owned was a milk crate bedside table, and a floor-to-ceiling pole to hang his bikes up. Very minimalist.

The bed was kind of lumpy, though.

Posted 9 months ago #
Vivace
Member

Well, this just got a lot easier and a lot more complicated at the same time.

My girlfriend and I were talking about furniture and how much space some things take up and we decided we're not going to bother with a pod OR a trailer OR movers - either it fits in the car (or the roof unit we're going to buy) or it's not coming. All the furniture is getting sold. We're having a party to let our friends go through our apartment and take anything they find useful.

It's really amazing how much less stressed I was after making that decision! I thought it would be harder, but it takes so many complicating things out of the equation, means we can find a furnished sublet without having to worry about storage, and will save money on gas during the drive.

I'm still kind of scared witless but at least it's one less thing to be scared about.

Posted 9 months ago #

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