Having not only moved many times myself, but also having been the first person roped in when friends move (due to my knuckle-dragging Neanderthal attributes), I consider myself pretty good at it, and I’ve got it all pretty streamlined. But a friend of mine is doing a type of move I’ve never done before - she’s moving about one or two blocks up the street.
I’m not sure how to approach this one. Has anybody ever made such a short move? I’m thinking to hire a ute (pickup sized like a large car rather than an SUV), and just throw one or two pieces of furniture on at a time. I can’t imagine having to do the whole truck-packing routine with blankets, ropes, etc. It’s just a little too far and over uneven concrete for me to simply use a trolley, or I’d do that instead - so a vehicle is needed, I think.
We recently moved our household about 200 yards. We did a lot of the small moving ourselves in carloads, because we had the luxury of time.
We did, however, have one big day where we asked for help from a few friends and some family members, and moved a whole bunch of stuff. We used a box truck from the dealership where my husband works. It was a beautiful thing. We didn’t do ropes and blankets, but made several trips with the truck.
A box truck is the right size and shape for what’s needed, but because you can easily make multiple trips, you can get the smallest one, which is nicer for maneuvering and loading. Everything went very smoothly.
My last move was about 500 metres to a street on the other side of the neighbouring school. I treated it exactly like any other move. I got removalists and they packed everything into the truck. They tied it all up properly. 500 metres may not be very far but it’s more than sufficient for something to come loose, fall over, break etc. We drove around the corner and then they unpacked everything.
I once moved the contents of a 3 bedroom house about 3 miles using a minivan. (The refrigerator was the most interesting part.) It took dozens of trips. A truck is much easier. Movers are even easier. (Not moving at all is easiest!)
I moved about 100 metres to my last-house-but-one, and actually I just roped in a couple of guys and we walked everything round the corner. However, this was from a share house, so roughly 80% of the stuff was “one bedroom’s worth”
It really depends on how cheap you are, whether you want to spend money for the van. I’m pretty cheap (oh, and it was all dead flat - that helps)
Most of my moves have been short distance moves. Treat it like any other move, IMHO. I moved once across the street - directly across, from one second floor unit to a third floor unit. It was the worst move ever. We figured we’d “take our time”, but that really just meant we were unprepared and throwing stuff in laundry baskets. We actually had to carry stuff further, feet wise, than if we were loading and unloading a truck - the second building had either a huge courtyard in the front, or a half-a-block walk to get around to the back.
Our next move was about a mile. I boxed ahead of time, I hired movers to take the furniture and as many boxes as I had ready. (Next time I’ll find more money for more mover-time if I have to kill puppies for it. Those guys are SO FAST! Next move I want them to pack everything and call me when it’s all delivered. With no packing, they emptied my three bedroom place and had it moved and unpacked in less than three hours. I’m sure they could have done the whole thing, with packing, in less than 10 hours.) The rest of the stuff was moved by car loads - but three cars at a time. I had my moving friends empty their cars so we could load all three instead of going back-and-forth three times for the same amount of stuff.
My parents recently built a new house about 200 yards from the old one, and moved using a combination of taking a box when they could and a couple weekend of moving big stuff. The first weekend, they moved the beds, clothing, and basic kitchen stuff up. Then they’d take a box a day from the old house to the new house. Then another weekend where big stuff was moved. It was done mostly by pick-up truck and car.
If you have the luxury of time, this is a great way to go through all your stuff and get rid of what you don’t need/want anymore. There are still a few things left in the old house, but there’s no rush. There’s quite some time until it’s demolished.
A move is a move is a move. Distance doesn’t mean much, if anything.
Pack your truck just like you would pack for a move accross town.
That said, there are some shortcuts you can take on this kind of moves. You can just stack your drawers (especially kitchen drawers!) and take them to your destination to just move things from one drawer to the next. This saves you the headache of packing/unpacking the kitchen, which is what normally takes the longest.
Ditto for any room with tons of small things. You don’t need to fully pack them, if you can afford to make several trips with someone keeping an eye on them.
Remember that a move is the perfect opportunity to take an honest look at your junk and throw the useless stuff away (yes, the stuff that is still on a box from LAST move). This is why I love moving. My stuff gets reduced to about a half every time I move.
We moved a couple of blocks from our old home to the one we’re in now. We just packed boxes and started moving that stuff over via our truck and SUV.
On the day that we moved our furniture, we just load up the pickup truck and enlisted the help of a couple friends to help lift it. It didn’t take us long at all.
The bonus was that we were pretty much packed up because we’d been prepping for a couple of weeks.