subject: Expert Tips For Simplifying Your Next Move [print this page] If there's one thing I know how to do, it's move into a new house. In the last ten years I've moved at least once a year - sometimes for work, sometimes for love, sometimes for a better neighborhood, and sometimes to save money. I've used professional movers, rented trucks, and storage pods, and I've done it with a team of people working for me and all on my own.
Having lots of experience helps you to see your deficiencies, and if I have one it's that I'm not good at asking my friends to help me out. The problem is that when they ask me to help with their moves, I always try to come up with a reason not to, so maybe at a subconscious level I feel undeserving of their help on my moving day. Whatever the reason, I'm bad at it. And to be honest I'm glad I am because friends don't usually make the best helpers.
I received a lesson in the reality of having friends help with a move a few years ago when I was in management at a company with about a hundred and fifty employees. Somehow news of my impending move spread through the office, and because of a general sentiment among the employees that being in the good graces of management was a good way to create job security, when the morning of that moved dawned employees started showing up at my house to help. When it was happening, I was grateful. It definitely made the day go faster, and it definitely made the job easier.
However, despite the help they gave me, that's the experience that taught me just how expensive it can be to have people do something for you for free. Nobody asked for a dime for their work, not even gas money for the drive there. But I felt obligated to buy lunch. And I felt obligated to buy some drinks when we were done. And by the end of it I'd dropped over five hundred dollars on that "free" labor. It would have been just as helpful and considerably cheaper to give a couple hundred bucks to each of two day laborers.
Help is usually a benefit on moving day because it really needs to be moving "day." Singular. Not moving "days." The only way to move is to do the whole thing in a day, from early in the morning to late at night. Pack it, load it, haul it, unload it, unpack it without going to sleep. It packs all the stress of moving into one day, which means you can go about life as usual the rest of the time instead of having The Big Move eat up weeks or months of your life.
When you move everything you own in one day, it's exhausting. Exhaustion actually makes you more willing to get rid of stuff, and a move isn't really a move unless you lighten your stockpile of personal possessions by at least 20%. Moving day for a person is like a big corporate layoff: it's the excuse you do need to cut all the fat you don't need.
Another key to a successful move is to use a storage pod as the method of conveyance. A storage pod is basically like the back end of a moving truck, but they drop it off at your place, let you fill it, then pick it up and move it to your new place, and leave it there for as long as you need to unload. After you've moved in one day, you're not going to want to unpack right away, so having a storage facility parked conveniently on the curb is a huge bonus.
If you do those things you'll find that moving is a snap. It might be a back-breaking snap that leaves you exhausted for a week, but it's still a snap. Just make sure to do it all in one day, use people you hire instead of people you know, and move everything in storage pods.
