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I'm getting ready to move to Colorado from Florida. Waiting for my current house to sell. The worst part for me is trying to decide how to get the cats there and if I have them flown there with professional "cat movers" they will be there before me (I'm driving) so are they supposed to be in an unfamiliar, empty house waiting for me to arrive?
Should I use a moving company, PODS or a U-Haul? I'm going to sell most of my furniture before moving. My older son moved there 3 years ago and he said for the price he paid for the professional movers he could have bought all new furniture. Plus one of the movers stole his brand new circular saw that was still in the box.
Decisions, decisions....
My post above "take your valuable things with you in the car" applies to pets, which can get lost or not fed/watered if you let them fly (even if you're on the flight).
.........But what were the aspects of moving that you didn't anticipate at the time, and wish you had known?
Well, first, not that I didn't anticipate but that I didn't realize, that I should have known.
RECOGNIZE that you have to move and get to it, don't hesitate, but accept it and move out.
That was a major component that lead to Operation: WHIRLWIND where I delayed disassembling my life of so long in one place that it became close to a panic in the end.
Secondly and this may be an unknown that moving companies of today may be much different from even a few decades ago. When I was a child, they came in with a crew, disassembled your life, boxed it up, put it on the truck.....and that's what I expected now.
But now, a lot of companies it seems expect you to have it all boxed up when they get there and they just load it up on the truck.
SO, at the very least, meet with the moving company EARLY so when you agree with them of what is expected, there is plenty of time to get ready for it.
I have moved 30 times. 5 were to other states. When young we did everything ourselves including loading and unloading the uhaul. Starting at age 43 I still packed everything and my husband drove the truck but we hired people at both ends to load and unload. Anything very fragile went in my car. I have never had anything broken or damaged.
My number one tip is to avoid professional packers and pack everything yourself.
I have moved myself many times and used a professional mover once. The professional mover was a neighbor that owned a moving company. That was great.
He did offer some advice.
Pick a moving company at the DESTINATION end. Mine was a corporate move and the money was in storage. So the moving company had a real incentive to put the stuff into storage and just watch the dollars flow day after day after day. In fact, my neighbor thought he would LOSE money moving me until he got the storage fees!!
Pack all the stuff for the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen that is all the basics and label, paint the boxes so their easily found. Then open these first in the respective rooms.
In our case, we bought a house and did the painting etc, before we had the furniture, etc. moved in.
I put my phone number on the boxes and said 'call if box is lost in the move'. I also marked the move date on the box. It gave me some hope in case a box was lost. In the last move I had.. when I wrote all that info on the boxes.. I didn't lose any boxes.
I would say don't pack things like drinking glass sets unless you like the set you have. They are cheap and easy to replace. Utensils like forks and spoons are easy to pack, also flat dishes and bowls can be nested.
You might want to donate some furniture you're not excited about. Don't bring it unless the replacement cost will be high. Furniture you put together yourself... like from the Home Depot website... is actually pretty nice and not too expensive. Bring things you super care about in your car if you can. Like I have a lot of craft supplies that would be a pain to replace, and they don't take up a lot of room. So I bring them in my car when I move. Definitely use a mattress bag for your mattress. Bring an air mattress with you, with sheets and lots of blankets, if your new home won't have furniture in it yet.
Also, uhaul sells a box of clean/blank newsprint paper for like $15 I think that seems to have more than enough paper you can crumple for padding inside the boxes. It seems like the box is never ending and I've used that a few times, and the you can just recycle the paper after your move.
Also, uhaul sells a box of clean/blank newsprint paper for like $15 I think that seems to have more than enough paper you can crumple for padding inside the boxes. It seems like the box is never ending and I've used that a few times, and the you can just recycle the paper after your move.
UHaul's blank newsprint packs are great though they used to be more generous for the price. I "recycled" mine by using less mangled sheets in my bird cage/aviary/critter cages.
We moved back to Texas last April (2023) after having lived in Indiana for nearly 9 years. We expected the hot, we expected the traffic, we expected that the cost of living was higher - we tried to talk out every angle. Our main goal was to be closer to my in-laws (and that's why I was looking for a job here, although if I'd been offered other positions elsewhere, that might've changed the scope of the move) - we even expected that my husband's family wouldn't change their lives to accommodate our arrival or that our one friend who also moved back to TX the year before would be able to fit us into her life.
What we didn't expect was EVERYTHING - I don't know if I can even explain such an intangible. Unless my husband makes the effort, family is scarce. Unless I make the effort with friend, she makes none. There are "open ended drop by" invitations but I've never dropped in on anyone unless invited and actually expect the same. It's just polite. We were invited to his sister's once but she forgot and never mentioned it. No one calls unless we call. It got to 110 over a few weeks - expected it but still, we remembered why we moved north. Traffic sure, but can't even find a spot to have brunch in our "little" town on Sunday without waiting over an hour or more. 3 times car insurance, apartments don't seem to have "deposits" anymore, just "admin fees" so they don't have to give you back anything you did deposit if you didn't trash your apartment. And we weren't sure we'd be able to find a home to buy because housing had tripled since 2020 - even after researching, we just didn't expect it.
We don't normally have "expectations" and are fairly realistic and try to think of every angle, but we didn't expect the apathy, the isolation...houses dropped prices over New Year's however, so we decided to jump in and buy a house. I think having our own place instead of moving into a sight-unseen apartment will pull us out of the funk. We're fairly close to retirement ourselves and that plan is in place in east Texas so living in town (just outside Dallas) will be ok until that day comes. Everyone is different but for us, finding a routine is helpful in adjusting to your new place - even if it's an "old" place lol. I also think when you move, as someone else pointed out, wherever you go, there you are, so don't expect your problems to disappear.
After many years, and for awhile now, we figured that one out so we were excited to move back "home". But my advice is, move for yourself and for your own reasons and then everything ends up panning out - we understand that families don't really change if they have no need to. Just because we yearned for some closeness didn't mean they were ready for it. It's really all good now but adjusting expectations and compromising is a huge part of moving - not just the physical aspect as so many others have mentioned.
When people move they try to cover a lot of contingencies:
research the area
have an emergency fund
write a budget and a todo list
ave a job/apt lined up
learn about the place's social services in case you end up homeless or in need, etc.
But what were the aspects of moving that you didn't anticipate at the time, and wish you had known?
Why the hell would you move without a job? That's just idiotic. Also researching the area should go without saying.
Why the hell would you move without a job? That's just idiotic. Also researching the area should go without saying.
I don't think that's what that post meant.
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