Throughout our entire relationship, my husband and I have moved eight times. Eight! Needless to say, we have had our fill of moving. Luckily, the last time we moved was 8 years ago. Since our little townhouse feels like it is shrinking as our children are growing, the topic of moving has been on my mind quite often during recent months.
When my husband and I were younger, the thought of moving was exciting. We would have a fresh start, new neighbors, and I would get to decorate our new home. Now that we are roughly middle-aged, I cringe at the thought of moving. It can be quite physically and mentally draining. Based on past experiences with moving, I would definitely do the following for our 9th move . . .
1. Although I would still do all the packing myself, we most definitely will hire a home delivery service to make the move for us. I think our backs, knees, and other parts would not survive doing the move ourselves. We did use movers once before when were were moving to a 3rd floor apartment. It is definitely the way to go, but I would use a service with white glove delivery like what 3PD offers, so that I would not have to worry about furniture being scratched or having any mess to clean up after the move has been completed.
2. During one move, I thought I was being so organized by numbering all the boxes and keeping a log in a notebook of what was in each numbered box. That system did not work out so well and caused unnecessary work. For our next move, I will clearly label the boxes with the contents and where the box should go (i.e. master bedroom, kitchen, attic, etc . . . ). One time I even taped half pieces of paper to each box with a form printed on them that had a place for all this information to be written. It did make it easier to spot the information than when we just wrote it right on the brown cardboard boxes. If you have the time, I highly recommend it.
3. Do not ask friends and family to help with the move! Although it does save you money, professional movers are more efficient. We have had friends and family help in the past and the move always took two or three times as long as it should have and several things were damaged each time. When things get damaged or permanently broken because of carelessness, you cannot hold anyone accountable since they were not being paid to help you.
Do you have any good tips about how to ensure that a move goes smoothly based on your own experiences?
