Is our usual supply of packing materials (newspaper,paper towels, and regular towels) going to work, or should we invest in peanuts/popcorn, bubble wrap, etc.?
Question:
1) How do we find/choose a company? Anyone have any recommendations?
(this is a move from northern VA to central CT...about 400 miles, I
think)
2) What's a ballpark figure for how much this should cost? We'll call
around for estimates, of course, but are we talking hundreds? A
thousand? If the price is really outrageous, we're just going to have
to be brave and get the U-Haul. :-(
3) How do these things work? Would we caravan with the moving guys? Do
we get there first and await our stuff?
4) When we move ourselves, there are a lot of "unpackables" that we just
deal with....lamps, the vacuum cleaner, ironing board, etc. Would we be
expected to have all of these sorts of things boxed as well?
Answer:
There are several services a moving co offers. You
can hire them for "move only" in which they only haul your stuff, and
you're most likely liable for breakage due to bad packing. You can
also hire them to pack and move your stuff. In that case (check the
insurance policy), you're insured for any damage or breakage caused by
their bad packing and moving. In some cases, you can pack your own
boxes (esp if you have original stereo boxes and the like), and the
packer will approve the packing, label it as such, and accept
liability for the box. (A packer-checked box.)
We didn't but we left our movers a supply of boxes and let them have at.
Most lamps didn't get boxed.
We invested! We spent quite a bit at U-Haul on their packing stuff and
specialty boxes. We really liked the boxes for packing glasses. It kept
them seperated...
It's late, I'm tired, and I'll happily answer any more questions that you
have!
I can share my experience of moving from cross country five times.
First of all, though it's sort of obvious, moving is stressful, so allow
yourself some time! I know that my moves were always the right thing but I
always had that moment of panic of "oh sh*t, what did i do to my life?"
Change is scary, even good, expected change.
Okay...I have not used movers, but moved myself. Once I did one of those
move it yourself dealies, where you rent space on a truck, you load it, they
haul it, and you unpack it. NEVER again! My stuff arrived completely
trashed, all over the place, water damage...I don't recommend it. For
moving yourself, I would not use U-Haul, personally, I haven't heard the
best about their maintenance. I used Ryder for the most recent move, and I
think they were fine. They also have a road side assistance plan, which I
thought was good. I am also looking at Penske for the ride back, since they
seem to be a little cheaper. There's a site that you can get an estimate
for different
movers...http://www.monstermoving.com/Moving_and_Planning/Quotes/ or
http://www.vanlines.com/ . As I said, I haven't used movers, so I'll defer
to others' experiences. The quotes I got online for moving a 729 sq foot
apartment were $1200 and up. It's expensive. I am not sure how it all
works in terms of who packs what or if you caravan with the movers.
In terms of packing, it always takes longer than you think. My tactic is to
start about a month or more in advance, and just pick a room. I tend to
like smaller rather than larger boxes, you need more of them, but they're
not so unweildy. Since I don't tend to ship stuff, I have used cardboard
bankers file boxes from Office Depot (or somewhere like that). I think I
got them for about 10 for $11...They're easy to carry, they have handles, I
can fill one with books or cds and still be able to lift it. You'll also
need larger boxes for pots and pans and clothes. For linens, I admit I just
use garbage bags. You'll need lots of tape, newspaper, bubble wrap, and I
like the excuse to buy a new sharpie to mark my boxes. I think bubble wrap
is a good investment for the things you really don't want to break - and
sturdy boxes. When you wrap silver in newspaper it tarnishes (learned the
hard way!). Also, if you're loading the truck yourselves, that's a long
process - it took us all day when we moved me out here to WI.
Imagine each box of stuff being heaved onto a truck and pack
accordingly. When the movers pack for you, they put paper between
every plate, then overwrap three or four plates together and stand
them on end in the box. Glasses get wrapped in tissue, then stood
in a box with dividers. As you can imagine, this costs a fortune.
Throw away everything you don't want moved. During one move we
unwrapped a box of crackers and an inflated balloon that we had no
idea they had packed.
The company paid for our last move from RI to CO and it cost them
over $25k. Nothing was broken or lost. We had a 7 rm house and there
were at least 3 other households packed onto the same van, both in
front of and behind ours. The movers were two days late getting to
Denver but we didn't mindthat time bacuse it gave us a chance to
repaint most of the walls in the house. (The former owner loved fuchsia
as well as silver foil wallpaper. We didn't.)
I don't mean to scare you, just warn you to be on guard about a lot of
possibilities.
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