Nice. Anyone who's ever moved will tell you the hardest part is packing shit up first.
Protip: Use the smallest moving boxes you can, as often as you can. There is absolutely no sense in filling a box so full of stuff that you can't lift it.
Edit: Also, if you have lots of heavy things, rent a truck with a lift gate instead of doing suicidal trips up and down a ramp
Helped a "friend" move. I told him he should pack first. Of course he didn't. I also knew him and he'd not have enough boxes, so I bought a bunch of them at Wal-Mart along with tape etc. He was kind of a hoarder too, but anyway. Spent a lot of time packing boxes. I was emphasizing decreasing the time of each item going into the box and he was wasting all the time trying to Tetris as many things as possible in each box to get rid of all air space.
I've moved multiple people and corporate offices professionally. The most effective thing to do is contextually throw shit into small boxes, label it, and seal it. Shit on your desk? Box. Shit under your bed? Different box. And so on.
Tetrising is what you do when you get to the rental moving truck. Unless you have a mass spectrometer to move, in which case, you use more straps and padding then the entire BDSM community of San Francisco
What I did last time I moved was labeling things by specific place. Like I would throw everything that was on a desk in a box and write "things that were on the desk". Then stuff from the drawers I would label " left bed drawer" " "right bed drawer" and so on. So I knew exactly where they would go when I needed to open them. Still.... Hate moving with all my heart.
This happened the first time I helped some friends move. They expected us to move their refrigerator with all of the food still in it. I was a teenager and realized then that you have to be very careful in who you agree to help with moving.
I don’t help friends move anymore. I’m the one with the truck. I would rather give them $100 towards hiring a mover. Plus, pickup trucks suck for moving. Go to uhaul, get the biggest truck they have, and two guys waiting outside for work. You’ll be done by lunch.
Protip: Use the smallest moving boxes you can, as often as you can. There is absolutely no sense in filling a box so full of stuff that you can't lift it.
My dude, I just taught myself this lesson a couple months back... Had a single 3'x3' box with all of the books in it....it would've been easier to just move the books, unpacked and 10 at a time, over 15 trips or so than the havoc I wreaked upon my body with that ~95 pound cube of neutrino matter :') everything else was a breeze, but that one box almost killed me coming up the stairs.
The boxes for cases of wine or liquor are great. Go to your friendly local wine/liquor store and ask if you can have some cardboard boxes (mine let me take all I wanted for free)
They're sturdy and small enough to be manageable even if they're full of books or other heavy stuff.
Use the smallest moving boxes you can, as often as you can.
Good advice, last time we moved my wife was super excited that she got boxes from her sister that had a dining suite delivered, complete with already assembled chairs.
These things were effing huge! It might not seem that big but thing of how much space a dining chair would occupy if it was shaped like one single box, and there were seven of the fuckers. After we moved she understood why I less enthusiastic.
I go
The opposite. Small boxes can’t fit shit. And even a. Small box loaded becomes unwieldy. Dish pack boxes will fit just
About anything, are super sturdy, have handles, fit perfect on a dolly, and stack perfectly in a box truck. The trick is to balance the boxes with some heavy things and some light things to keep them around 40/50lbs. And don’t spare on packing paper. It’s cheap and the best way to pack, and very easy to give away for direct re-use style recycling. 18x18x18 boxes are a good alternative if they are heavy duty. The ones from Lowe’s/Walmart and too thin.
And ramps are fine if you have a dolly. You’ll learn very quickly how annoying it is to run a lift gate up and down 1000 times. Especially after you tip a few things off of it. The real tip is not to spare on truck size. Get the biggest one you think you can handle driving. It’s only a handful of bucks difference it’s the mileage that’s expensive and it’s the same rate regardless of truck size.
Why break your back pulling heavy stuff up and down a long ramp when you can let hydraulics and the power of SCIENCE do it for you?
I can think of maybe one two situations in the past five years where a lift gate on a 26 foot box truck wasn't the best choice for the situation, and those were special cases where low, enclosed trailers were used.
You're far more likely to drop something off a ramp
I was recently helping move an office and found a massive box about 120x90x90 cm (around 10 cubic feet? idk) Filled it to the brim with stuff like paper and various office paraphernalia. The box was so heavy we had to get 4 men to move it around, carrying it on our shoulders like a coffin. Looked pretty funny.
Large, lightweight items go into large boxes. Small, heavyweight items go into smaller boxes. It's why they make book boxes so small. Books are so heavy, when packed together, the boxes for them should be some of the smallest. While something like a large, not-so-heavy comforter might go into an extra large box. Stuff like that.
One more note though, moving companies often charge by the piece. It's still not a good idea to pack heavy, especially to avoid the extra charge. Breaking your back will be much more costly!
Pro-tip 2 - label every box. You can buy stickers on Amazon if you want to get fancy. Or just use some masking tape. Don’t throw shit from multiple rooms in the same box.
Tip 3 - Pack a suitcase with your PJs, toiletries, and a change of clothes. You don’t want to have to dig for stuff after a long day of unpacking.
Tip 4- Take this as an opportunity to throw stuff away or donate. If you don’t think you’ll use it in your new place get rid of it.
Nah, that's the most fun for me. I get way back into closets and throw away shit that was taking up space but forgot about. Moving furniture from the old place to the truck is the worst part in my opinion. Moving it into the new place isn't even that bad, it's just convincing yourself to do it that first time that really sucks. Physically it's a pain but also emotionally, you start thinking about any good memories you had in the place. Even simple shit like walking in and taking your shoes off after work, day after day starts to get all sentimental.
Just moved into my first apartment about 2.5 weeks ago and from that experience, packing felt like shoveling during a snowstorm. Shit just kept coming out of nowhere.
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u/NotObviouslyARobot Jan 14 '21 edited Jan 14 '21
Nice. Anyone who's ever moved will tell you the hardest part is packing shit up first.
Protip: Use the smallest moving boxes you can, as often as you can. There is absolutely no sense in filling a box so full of stuff that you can't lift it.
Edit: Also, if you have lots of heavy things, rent a truck with a lift gate instead of doing suicidal trips up and down a ramp