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Advice on moving economically
Yoshua
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I am hoping someone more savvy at this than myself could offer some tricks and tips to my upcoming move (I bought a house for my family).
The storage unit we have our stuff in is about 50 miles from where we are moving.
I have a maximum of two and a half days to move everything too large to fit in my car to the new house.
What has worked well for you and what does not? (This is in Washington state by the way).
The storage unit we have our stuff in is about 50 miles from where we are moving.
I have a maximum of two and a half days to move everything too large to fit in my car to the new house.
What has worked well for you and what does not? (This is in Washington state by the way).
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See if you can get a shipping pod (basically a small storage crate) that can be delivered to your house. You put everything into the pod, then have them pick it up - they'll store it until you're ready for delivery, then they deliver it and let you unload.
Another idea is moving the stuff from the storage locker to the uhaul yourself, but get "labor only" movers to unpack the uhaul once you're there. Reasons to consider this:
1. Getting your stuff from uhaul to house will probably be much harder than getting your stuff from storage unit to uhaul. It will be later in the day when you're already tired, and depending how your new home is there might be things like narrow doorways or stairs to consider.
2. Professional movers work really fast, so you might be able to offset part of the cost of hiring them because you can return the truck sooner.
3. Movers will have their own insurance in case one of them gets hurt while moving stuff on your property.
The catch is that labor costs vary a lot from state to state, so you'll have to call a few places to see if something like this would make sense in your situation.
I looked, it is about 180 to 190 dollars for 2 movers for 2 hours, and about 80 dollars an hour after that.
I've had luck with thumbtack for other kinds of jobs, but I think your distance is right on the bubble between local move and long distance.
These are super convenient, if a hair expensive. The one thing to remember though, absolutely do not schedule the pod pickup for after you have already moved out of the house. An empty house and a full pod is a ripe target for thieves, and when the truck shows up to load the pod if the lock is broken or tampered with the loaders will refuse it.
That is extremely fair for moving crew costs, at least in Florida. Let me break that down for you. 180 for two movers, really means about 90 bucks a mover for two hours. Usually that internally is broken down as:
If you are strong and healthy, and have 3-5 people willing to help you in your move who can ALSO lift heavy furniture, I'd go with a Uhaul, a case or two of beer, a cooler, and all the pizzas you can order. It still will come down to a few hundred bucks in the end, but thats the cheap and collective way to do it. Bonus cost is you have to be willing to do the same for anyone in that team when they move else you are a total jerk forever.
If you don't have that many willing people, pay some professionals with proper licensing in your state. The job will be done much quicker and better than if you did it with your friends, and if you are a decent person with the movers (offer them cold drinks as you work and treat them like professional human beings rather than peons) you likely will have a great experience and possibly gain some contacts for future moving needs or even local contractors in various areas. Professional Movers often are also well connected with the housing industry (such as roofing, repairs, and electrical) and do different work seasonally as the demand ebbs and flows.
Moving is a huge amount of hard work.
So yeah, cheapest is a truck and some friends with pizza and beer. Also the [strike]understanding[/strike] blood oath that you will help those friends move at any point in the future.
Good luck - it might be hard to get someone out that fast if they need to make an estimate before hand
Do you absolutely need to move everything at once? for that short of a distance I would just get it out over a span of time. rent a truck for the biggest hgings, but use your car for everything else
http://www.homedepot.com/p/HDX-20-gal-Tote-2020-0108/202523597
They save a ton of time. You don't have to build boxes, just toss shit in them pop the lid and put them on a dolly. 2 fit on fine, you can do 3 on a dolly if they are light or you have straps, but they make moving packing and unpacking so much easier. Especially if you are doing a storage Do-Ce-Do.
Dolly is just something necessary when you need to move a lot of stuff quickly. At a storage unit, since there are no stairs, you can pretty much dolly everything to the truck yourself. If your truck has a ramp you can put it in the truck yourself no help.
Ehh, but the plastic bins are like 6.50 vs 1.50 for equivalent size box...
Plastic bins are reusable, and double as long term storage between moves!
They're also stackable if you get all the same size so they don't take up a huge amount of room. Just stuff them in the back of a closet until you need them. Once you start accruing things like Christmas decorations or similar things, you'll find a use for them.
Yeah, the upfront cost can be a bit steep, but I think in the long run it's worth it.
aka - I'll probably never get rid of this junk
My garage is depressingly filled with these bins full of shit I never look at nor need. Tonight I will throw some away since tomorrow is trash day!
Rent a truck, U-Haul, Penske, whatever. Load up anything you absolutely cannot fit in your own car first. Couch, bookshelves, entertainment system, beds and bed frames, etc. You can stack boxes and other stuff on top of or inside your furniture. This is where years of Tetris should come in handy. Make sure you fill in the truck, stack up things as high as you can so you don't waste space, but make sure that your top layer is roughly even so you don't have stacks of stuff falling over the first corner you take. Heavy boxes on bottom, lighter stuff on top. Wrap anything breakable (TV) in as many blankets and pillows as you can and put it in a place where it cannot fall, and nothing will fall and hit it. (I put it against my matress with my couch behind it, never had a problem)
Take your time loading things, better to spend an extra hour or three loading it up, if it saves you an entire trip to come get a dozen items.
The unloading is critical and this is where I always prefer to have help if you can't get help for the whole process. I always write on the box what is in it, and what room it is going to, which makes the unloading a lot easier. unless you want to live in a fort made of boxes that are piled up everywhere. If you can have someone in the truck assigning stuff to carry (you maybe), this is super helpful. You need someone in the house to organize as things come in (wife maybe). Get the boxes in the house, stacked against a wall in whatever room, so that they are out of the way when you need to drag in the furniture. order the pizza as you start to drag in furniture, so it shows up just as you are finishing, or getting close.
A lot of the storage places around here , are just Trailer Truck beds, for a charge, they will bring the entire storage unit to your driveway ( and then back once empty)
Guessing it's not one of those places tho.