No matter what the circumstances, moving your place of residence can curdle the blood of the most upbeat and patient individual. Moving, from a house to another house - from an apartment to a house, or vice-versa is a daunting process. To move locally is one thing, but moving cross-country, which is what we are discussing in this article, is a whole different story. In an attempt to allay some of the stress we have written up some tips and ideas along with stories that come from our client's and or own experiences to help alleviate some of the burden in the daunting task called moving. Although most of the ideas we presented here are a matter of common sense, there should be some helpful takeaways that most people who aren’t in the moving business can garner from reading this article.
You and your spouse or partner should act wisely by drawing out a plan before you start packing the first box. Take the time to sit down with a clipboard and a legal pad and write down a step-by-step guide as to how you are going to approach the move. Everyone has a different set of circumstances, which makes it impossible to conjure a one-size-fits-all generic template or a step-by-step guide as to how to approach your particular move. So, you have to customize your plan. If the plan makes sense, and you follow it, then hopefully things will run smoothly. A well-written plan should save time, money, stress, and undue aggravation as you go through this arduous process. The first list you should be drawing up is what things are taking with you, and what will be staying behind. Before you even begin a moving strategy you need to make this list.
But Wait! Are you sizing up or sizing down? If you are young and raising a family chances are you will be purchasing a larger home than the one you are living in now, so in this case scenario you will be (sizing-up.) Again, and In either case, you must consider is what you are going to take with you and what you are going to leave behind. This may be the most difficult part of the process, especially if either you or your spouse or God forbid the both of you are sentimentalists with the slight tinge of a hoarding locked loosely somewhere in your DNA. I call people who have this affliction in one manner or other stuffers. I hope not that’s not the case with you because it just makes everything so much more difficult.
As nature has its way, eventually, for the sane along with the unstable, reality will kick in and develop a narrative that carries a keen sense of the proper thing to do goes when it comes time to load that truck. This narrative certainly isn’t fool-proof and has multiple ways of falling apart, especially towards the end of the move when the hoarder gene forces the affected to stuff and keep on stuffing. My wife is a stuffer, a personality disorder that she acknowledges and tries to keep at bay. But the flesh is weak.
Warning!! The stuffer can be cruelly stubborn, often leaving you exhausted and tired, and confused after enduring all the battles fought to get to a place somewhere along the way where you call a truce. The truce is held to allow time for both sides to forge a verbal contract of negotiated terms between themselves. These terms will not stand up unless there they are built on a reasonable consensus that must be honored and agreed upon by both parties with full sincerity and pure intention.
Even if the stuffer agrees with everything, with all manner of sincerity and the best of intentions, they will break the pact because the stuffer can’t help themselves. I will end my digression now, and stick to the people who are perfectly sane and normal. If you look hard enough you can still find them.
Take an inventory of all your belongings. Include furniture, appliances, accent pieces, the size of the bed and the style of the bedroom furniture, the TV, and the entertainment center. Now I’m guessing some pieces have been sitting in your house for a minimum of seven years, which is the average time people stay in the same home. Chances are you also have things for much longer, like that Ikea bookshelf that you bought when you were poor and still in college.
Remember, your stuff might look great in your current home, but that is most likely going to change when you go to furnish your new and much larger home. For example, is that old refrigerator and dining room set your mother-in-law gave you after you got married going to look right in much larger and more contemporary digs? That queen-sized bed that looked fantastic in your old bedroom, but now your new house, which comes with a large master bedroom dwarfs the bed and swallows up the rest of your starter bedroom furniture. Keep in mind the entire size and scope of the new house are entirely different than the one you are in now. The popular interior colors are different than where you came from. The landscaping, window treatments, and both interior and exterior doors are probably going to be bigger and heavier than the ones you had in the other house.
The whole dynamic has changed, and you have to do the best you can depending on your means to, step up and make this new home look and feel as close as to that house you have been dreaming about.
Many of the things you had in the old house may look dated and out of place in your new home. Don’t be nervous. No law that says you have to go out and buy everything new all at once, but there are a certain few things you might want to swap out before the move in. You will soon figure out what they are.
Hopefully, you were proactive and left yourself plenty of time to make proper decisions before the move. If you have that time it may be a good idea to spend some of it on running a garage sale and putting items up for sale on sites like Craigslist and Offer-up. It’s better to part with things that won’t fit your new decor before the move because instead of throwing good money after bad by stubbornly schlepping those things thousands of miles across the country, only to find you going to have to get rid of them after all. The stuffer knows deep down in their heart and soul that they dragged along a bunch of crap that will never fit the style or theme of the new home, but they go and do it anyway.
You just made a huge investment. Do you want your new home to come off looking like Grandma's house after spending a boatload of time and money on a fresh start? Make a list of the things you must take and dispose of the rest. The less you take the more you’re going to save on moving costs. And who knows, you might get lucky and sell some things that will give you extra money to buy that new California King you’ve been dreaming about.
If you are downsizing the same principles apply. It’s time to get rid of stuff. The main difference when you downsize is that you are constrained on loading up the place with a bunch of newly acquired items in tighter quarters. But be rest assured, the stuffer will find a way to create an overflow under the tightest of confinements.
Take a good look at your budget and figure out what type of move can you can afford. The easiest, but most expensive way is to hire a professional full-service moving company. These white glove companies handle the whole move for you, from soup to nuts. They have these enormous moving vans that can transport everything you own, including your cars. All you have to do is show up and wait for the movers to arrive and have them load your belongings into the new home. They will pack your boxes, move all of the heavy stuff out to the truck, blanket everything and strap it all down so it is secure and safe for transport.
If you do hire a full-service moving company the wisest thing to do is take out a separate insurance policy that covers everything over and above what the mover offers in their insurance rider. They use some strange type of ratio that has to do with space and weight. The intrinsic value of an antique or a piece of artwork probably won’t be covered for full value under those policies. Be smart and purchase your policy to cover those things that are too expensive and impossible to replace.
If you are an able-bodied person, get on the truck as many times as you can throughout the phase of the move to make sure everything is blanketed and tied down correctly. Keep checking as many times as possible, all the way up until the point when the truck is filled and ready to pull away from the curb. If they miss an important tie-down and a couple of blankets, and things do get damaged, you’ll be fighting with them until the seven horsemen of the apocalypse come riding back before you get your money. So don’t be shy, and who cares if the mover thinks you’re a neurotic pain in the ass. These are your things, and you have every right to go out of your way to protect them.
Try not to be ashamed of overwhelmingly surprised if you can’t afford full-service moving. The entire home buying process, from the money you had to put down to the closing costs, can wreak havoc on whatever you have leftover in the way of cash reserves. Depending on the size of your load and the distance of the ride, a full-service mover can charge anywhere between $5,000 to $20,00. If you can’t afford it be ready to move across the big game board of life to Plan-B. There are several Plan B’s. C’s and so on. I’ll use my scenario when I moved cross-country, from Philadelphia to Las Vegas, some years ago. First I did some research and thought about the logistics of the move for a couple of days, and then went for it.
The first thing I did was clean out the garage. I made a space big enough to place most of the things in the house. By doing that I could pull a truck into the driveway right up to the garage doors, which would make loading much simpler. Then my wife and I started packing boxes. Some boxes we bought, and others we scrounged around for at shopping centers and grocery stores. We packed over fifty large boxes. The largest Uhaul truck I could find was 26’ long, and I knew there was no way everything that we owned was going to fit into a truck that size. At the time, this was back in 1993, UPS had a deal where you could fill up a box within a certain dimension, and they would charge a flat rate for it. So, we shipped the boxes to a neighbor we met during the time of closing. We sold one of our cars and put the other one on a car carrier, rented from Uhaul as well. Between the two of us, we had accumulated so much stuff that we couldn’t get everything on the truck. My wife, the stuffer insisted we could but I knew better. I told her whatever doesn’t fit on the truck is either getting sold, given away, or donated. She pretended to agree, but I found out later on that she had given things for friends and relatives to hold onto, figuring she could have somehow had them shipped later. Thankfully that little ploy of hers never materialized.
Moving day came and my wife, myself, and our two dogs got in the truck and we began our trek from Philadelphia to Las Vegas. The trip was filled with misadventures, which I won’t get into in this thread, but let’s just say it was one hell of a trip. We played it smart by renting the truck for a full week. We drove about fifteen hours a day and got to Las Vegas in four days. It was a good thing we pushed the driving because it gave us plenty of time to unload the contents into the new house.
I made another big move since that time, but it was only a few miles away, and it was simple compared to the first move. There are plenty of ways to move long distances, and my story is only one of many. Because we were young and could do the entire move ourselves the cost was well below three-thousand. But that was back in 1993. I don’t know what it would cost to do the same thing now. My guess would be somewhere close to double. When we checked into full moving before we did it the way I just described, it was somewhere between ten to 12-thousand, and at that time it was way out of our price range.
Keep in mind there are several ways to negotiate a cross-country move. Here are some options. If you dig deep enough I’m sure you’ll find others.
1. Full-Service Shipping: Hassle-free and the movers handle everything, you hope.
2. Moving Container: The company drops off a shipping container, you pack it, and the company moves it for a flat rate.
3. Freight Trailer: You load a trailer and pay per linear foot of space you used. Usually cheaper than containers per square mile, you pay only for the space you need.
4. Moving Truck: You load a moving truck, drive it to your destination and unload it yourself or recruit some friends and neighbors.
5. Moving Trailer: You load a moving trailer and pull it with your vehicle to your new home.
Anyway, good luck with the move.
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